Ser Serpas

Ser Serpas’s practice exists at the blurred intersection of art, poetry and activism. Whether creating sculptures from debris found on the street, working with a hoard of fabric gifted by her friends, making an exhibition out of objects she found at the exhibition site, drawing in public spaces, or writing on train rides, Serpas makes work that complicates the notion of materiality amidst the late-capitalist condition. Created in private, intimate, seemingly improvised moments, the works are never fully -visible to her audiences. The artist’s exhibitions are composed of assemblages of discarded and mistreated objects turned corporeal, becoming what the artist calls ‘assisted readymades’. Subverting Duchamp’s readymades and Rauschenberg’s Combines – the male-dominated history of sculpture – Serpas returns the objects to the streets after her exhibitions, allowing them to revert to their original state and provokes playful questions about the value of the space inside a museum, as opposed to the outside. An activist since high -school, the artist speaks up about structural inequalities, and provides support through facilitated workshops, community aid and artistic inspiration. Written by Goldsmiths CCA ...

Balice Hertling was founded in 2007 by Daniele Balice and Alexander Hertling. Balice Hertling has hosted the debut solo shows of many artists like Camille Blatrix, Xinyi Cheng and Isabelle Cornaro—all of whom have gone on to earn widespread recognition. From 2012 to 2016, gallery founders Daniele Balice and Alexander Hertling operated a project space in Manhattan. Returning to France in 2017, they relocated the main gallery to Paris’ Marais district and transformed the former Belleville location into a space for curated projects and shows by younger artists. Indeed, many artists represented by the gallery exemplify unique subcommunities of the emergent art world. This breadth of representation also translates to a breadth of medium, as the gallery represents painters as well as artists working in mixed media such as film, performance and sculptural objects. The gallery also represents artists whose careers are more established : British conceptual artist Stephen Willats, Syrian-born painter and sculptor Simone Fattal, and Italian artist Enzo Cucchi. In its programming and practices, Balice Hertling constantly works toward creating a more diverse and equitable art landscape. In this spirit, the gallery is proud to represent the Estate of Behjat Sadr, who was the first woman artist to be recognized as a modern master in Iran. As a result of the pandemic, the gallery co-founded « Palai » in the summer of 2021, a yearly exhibition hosting a small group of galleries from around the world, in historic locations in Lecce, a city in Italy's Puglia region. Palai is neither a curated exhibition nor a fair, it is thought to be a version of a residency, a collegial collaboration, where artists, galleries, and friends of the art world come together. In 2021 Balice Hertling relocated and brought closer both spaces in the Marais with a new main space inaugurated by a Ser Serpas scultpure solo show, and a new showroom and project space on rue de Montmorency. ...