Again in June 2023, Pope Francis welcomed some 200 artists, writers and creatives to have fun the Vatican’s up to date artwork assortment. Among the many artists representing the USA have been Barry X Ball and Andres Serrano whose 1987 work Immersion (Piss Christ) – {a photograph} of a plastic crucifix steeped in urine – scandalized the artwork world and U.S. senators alike. Regardless of the numerous works ripe for backlash from Christian protestors, the Pope applauded the humanities for its potential to convey hope to the world, with out shying away from the depths and darkness of humanity.
At Patricia Low Modern in Gstaad, Switzerland, Serrano and Ball mirror on their Vatican go to in a brand new duet present. Titled Pious & Profane, the exhibition attracts a connection between these two seemingly disparate ideas, emphasizing “concord and wonder” by means of “jarring, confrontational” paintings.
For Ball, who was raised amongst fundamentalist Christians, making artwork is, itself, a sacred endeavor. Fascinated with the inherent humanity of saintly iconography, Ball’s sodalite and marble sculptures appears past the markers of religion in classical work to disclose the edge between purity and imperfection.
In the meantime, Serrano views the holy and the blasphemous as two sides of the identical coin. Evident in newer work and notorious Immersion sequence, the place he submerges Christian figures in his personal physique fluids, Serrano’s apply reimagines the antithetical relationship between the ugly and the elegant, inviting viewers to uncover the “sanctity hidden inside desecration – and vice versa.”
“The pious and the profane might at first appear worlds aside—one immersed in reverent devotion, the opposite in audacious defiance. But they share a efficiency of feeling that each unsettles and enthralls,” the gallery wrote. “In these acts, devotion and provocation change into inseparable, every sparking a pathway towards transcendence.”
Pious & Profane is now on view in Gstaad by means of March 15, 2025.
Patricia Low Modern
Promenade 55,
3780 Gstaad, Switzerland
