The artist José Luis Serzo is the protagonist of the first solo exhibition of the season in the Sala Robayera, which is entitled “The temptations of Courbet” and opens on Friday, June 17, 2022 at 7:30 p.m. at its usual headquarters, in the old schools of Cudón (Cantabria). With the support of the City Council of Miengo and the Ministry of Universities, Equality, Culture and Sport of the Government of Cantabria, this monographic event includes a multidisciplinary selection of more than thirty works signed between 2017 and 2022, which form the backbone of the most recent production of the painter from La Mancha based in Cantabria.

In this exhibition Serzo uses the figure of the painter Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) – the greatest exponent of the realist movement of the nineteenth century – as an excuse to talk about his desires, fears, memories, dreams and impulses, proposing a break with “that Judeo-Christian tradition that insists that we fear almost everything”. The artist appeals to the collective unconscious that connects all human beings and that is often repressed in the depths of our being, recounting “that life that we do not dare to live or that we do not believe possible”, as Lidón Sancho Ribes explains in one of the texts that accompanies the catalog of the exhibition. In this way, guilt dialogues with pleasure and fear with an intense eroticism that merges with the unmistakable features of the Serzian universe: a very personal iconography, sublime scenarios and landscapes, masks, flowers, garlic and its characteristic crimson curtains, as well as a whole repertoire of references to some of the most dazzling episodes in the History of Art: from Renaissance and Baroque echoes to winks related to romantic, symbolist and surrealist aesthetics, but also to cinema and popular theater, also introducing a lucid and sensitive reflection on his own artistic practice.

The Álvaro Alcázar gallery presents, from next Thursday, March 24, the exhibition
individual artist José Luis Serzo, who is, in the words of historian Juan Manuel Bonet,
“one of the most powerful voices of the current figuration”. The exhibition, which includes works in
painting, sculpture and installations, can be visited until mid-May.

José Luis Serzo (Albacete 1977) returns, with a new series that promises to become one of the most subversive and disturbing of his career.
“One of the most powerful voices of current figuration” (in the words of historian Juan Manuel Bonet), Serzo lands again in Madrid, hand in hand with the Álvaro Alcázar gallery.

Courbet’s temptations could be the life we dare not live: the people we want to merge with or the places we want to travel despite the terror of throwing ourselves into the void. José Luís Serzo (Albacete, 1977) uses the painter Gustav Courbet as an excuse to take us to a stage where pleasure, eroticism and guilt dance; a pictorial and sculptural reverie that teaches us the world without fuss or filters. From the dreams and fears of Courbet imagined by Serzo we witness a study of erotica linked to fantasy, banished long ago from the sex we practice in this society of omniscreen.

Serzo studies in this exhibition sexuality lived as a game and approaches the female anatomy with an authority that almost frightens; bodies that are landscapes, postures that are the stellar motion of the universe. It fills them with pulsating iconographies, death masks, flowers, eroticized garlic and a sea of crimson curtains that crave skirts towards the madness of feeling, losing precisely the senses with it. And so, he tells us that to live intensely is also to approach death.

Lidón Sancho Ribés. Art critic and writer.

In the week of art in Spain, José Luis Serzo, together with RTVE, will be present at ARCO (International Contemporary Art Fair of Spain) with “Essays for a great work”.

The PAK (Platform for Contemporary Arts), the Dr. Guislain Museum and the Sint-Amandus Psychiatric Center organize the exhibition

A BUTTERFLY’S SCREAM

An exhibition on the limits of psychiatry, in which José Luis Serzo participates.

The inauguration will be next Sunday, October 24 at 14:30 in the Sint-Marie building, Reigerlostraat 10 8730 Beernem, Belgium.

The exhibition is introduced by Bart Marius, artistic director of the Dr. Guislan Museum, and Geert Bosma, chief psychiatrist of the Sint-Amandus Psychiatric Center.

Participating artists:

Sofie Muller – Marc Maet – Pascale Pollier – Milan Jespers – Karl Mechnig – Greet Desal – Stefaan De Croock – Stief DeSmet – Chantal Pollier – Frans Gentils – Stéphanie Leblon – Didier Mahieu – Michael Filez – Gino Lucas – Bryan Green – Aleksei Kazantsev – Reniere&Depla – Steven Peters Caraballo – Katrien Orlans – Yves Velter – Nico Vaerewijck – Danielle van Zadelhoff – Lotte van de Walle – Jean-marc Chapa – Jean Janssis – Valérie Naessens – Ruth Devriendt – Hans Defer – Rudy Cremonini – Ger and De Smet – Valérie Decleer – Annemarie Casteleyn

Timetable:

Monday to Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Saturdays and Sundays from 14:00 to 18:00 hs.

Hand in hand with the Siboney gallery, in Santander, the work of José Luis Serzo is exhibited in the 29th Edition of ESTAMPA. Contemporary Art Fair.

“From Serzo, we present works that already work by themselves, but that armed as a kind of altarpiece, transmit to the viewer the notion of exhibition-story. In this case from his series: The Initiate.” Siboney Gallery. Santander

This edition will be held from 21 to 24 October 2021 at IFEMA.

We are waiting for you in Hall 3, Stand 3C05.

The Deputy of Culture, David Mingo, and the artist José Luis Serzo presented yesterday the exhibition ‘Projects and other germinal drawings’ that will remain in the Exhibition Hall of La Salina until the end of August.

The artist was described by Mingo as “groundbreaking and imaginative, creator of fantasy with a mastery of different techniques and artistic manifestations ranging from drawing, painting, photography, sculpture to theatrical architecture, which makes him a complete, total artist with contemporary features and Renaissance evocation”.

Five years ago, Mingo recalled, Serzo presented at the DA2 ‘Teatrorum’, a magical and surprising installation that collected the essence of the creative, imaginary and fantastic world. And what was presented yesterday at La Salina is “the genesis that gives rise to Serzo’s artistic composition, from the germinal drawings to the conclusion of the work”.

Thus, the exhibition contains the ‘germinal drawings’ that suggest the origin of its complex assembly installations. These are the sketches, studies and essays that constitute the genesis of his multifaceted work and attest to the origin of his creations.

“Through drawing, photography, objects, installations, video and literature, José Luis elaborates the common thread and tells us dream stories with an optimistic transcendence”, added the Deputy for Culture.

For his part, the artist pointed out that “it is the first time that I exhibit the drawings that were intended to be stored in notebooks, drawers, which have served me for the realization of installations that have been seen in several countries”. And he acknowledged that it gave him “a certain modesty to show some diaries; because some of the notebooks that are in the showcases for me are like intimate diaries, very personal, where the line emerges as an outline of an idea, sometimes very primitive”, But, he added, that perhaps “this also has its magic” and makes the exhibition “didactic, for those who have interest and curiosity about how the creative process is generated. Everything is born from a few small lines.” In addition, he indicated that the exhibition also “rescues” pieces from other exhibitions.

Dear friends, we have the immense pleasure of inviting you to three simultaneous events that will occur in an extraordinary way, and again, in the lands of Salamanca.

First of all, we are waiting for you in my next exhibition Projects and other germinal drawings, which opens next Friday 2 July at 18h in La Salina,Exhibition Hall of the Diputación de Salamanca. A peculiar exhibition where, for the first time, I show sketches, unpublished notebooks and project drawings, most of them never before exhibited, which have served as a germ for the development of many sculptures, installations and projects carried out and to be carried out. This is how in this exhibition we will also show some sculptures next to his previous drawings, thus illustrating part of the creative process or
working method that I have been doing for more than 20 years.

On the other hand, from the same Friday 2 at 11h in the morning, in the town of Morille*, public sculpture will be inaugurated El SentAdo de la vida (one of the projects exhibited in the exhibition of La Salina and dated in 2001), which will finally see the light 20 years later, being made and installed permanently at the entrance of the town.

José Luis Serzo (Albacete, 1977) presents his second solo exhibition at the Artizar Gallery after Scenes and Events inside and outside a Teatrorum, in June 2016. On this occasion, and under the title
Morphology of the encounter,
Serzo exhibits one of his most recent series, with half a dozen totally unreleased works.

Morphology of the Encounter tells the story of Michael Burton Junior, a senior finance executive inspired by the Wall Street films of the 1980s, who is forced to embark on an initiative in the search, perhaps, for the meaning of his life.

ARCHICTRIC by José Luís Serzo lands in Santiago de Compostela in a joint exhibition in the GALLERIES TRINTA and METRO.

In an unprecedented collaboration, the TRINTA and METRO galleries of Santiago de Compostela come together to present ARCHITRIC. HISTORY OF A CONNUO RENACER, last series by the Manchego artist José Luis Serzo. ARCHITRIC, work produced and exhibited at the CAB de Burgos last year 2020, it brings with it the author’s first self-titled short film, awarded at international festivals such as the Award for Best Creative Vision at the International Thai Film Festival 2020 / Special Award in Thailand, the Award for Best Photography at the Moscow MosFilmFestival 2020 or the Best Actress Award (Ana Serzo) at the New York True Film Festival 2020, among others. In addition, finalist at ARFF Amsterdam 2020, and three nominations at the Montreal International Wreath Awards Film Festival 2020 for Best Music, Best Editing and Best Cinematography. This double exhibition brings together an important part of all that material that Serzo has had to produce for the fifteen minutes that the film lasts. Storyboards, preparatory drawings, some gallinaceae sculpture, some painting, among which are The Great Empty Landscape or The Morning Pedaling of Archimetrics on Manchega Lands, some table of Russian constructivist resonances, The delirium or dream of Archimetric, alluding to the gallinanaceous pedaling, the Dadaist Courtship, on methacrylate, which includes the rooster Tzara and the hen Emmy Hennings, the portrait of the mother of Archimetric… , will turn the halls of both galleries into places to travel through the rich Sertian universe.

Award Best Creative Vision for the short film of ARCHITRIC International Thai Film Festival 2020 / Special Award. Thailand

Award Best Photography for the short film of ARCHITRIC MosFilmFest 2020. Moscow.

Best Actress Award for the 2020 ARCHIMETRIC Short Film (Ana Serzo).

Finalists in ARFF Amsterdam 2020

3 nominations for archiMETRIC short film at the Montreal International Wreath Awards Film Festival 2020: Best Music, Best Editing and Best Cinematography