Andres Serrano and Barry X Ball Rework Religious Iconography in 'Pious & Profane'
“In these acts, devotion and provocation become inseparable.”
Back in June 2023, Pope Francis welcomed some 200 artists, writers and creatives to celebrate the Vatican’s contemporary art collection. Among the artists representing the United States were Barry X Ball and Andres Serrano whose 1987 work Immersion (Piss Christ) – a photograph of a plastic crucifix steeped in urine – scandalized the art world and U.S. senators alike. Despite the many works ripe for backlash from Christian protestors, the Pope applauded the arts for its ability to bring hope to the world, without shying away from the depths and darkness of humanity.
At Patricia Low Contemporary in Gstaad, Switzerland, Serrano and Ball reflect on their Vatican visit in a new duet show. Titled Pious & Profane, the exhibition draws a connection between these two seemingly disparate concepts, emphasizing “harmony and beauty” through “jarring, confrontational” artwork.
For Ball, who was raised amongst fundamentalist Christians, making art is, itself, a sacred endeavor. Fascinated with the inherent humanity of saintly iconography, Ball’s sodalite and marble sculptures looks beyond the markers of faith in classical work to reveal the threshold between purity and imperfection.
Meanwhile, Serrano views the holy and the blasphemous as two sides of the same coin. Evident in newer paintings and infamous Immersion series, where he submerges Christian figures in his own body fluids, Serrano’s practice reimagines the antithetical relationship between the ugly and the sublime, inviting viewers to uncover the “sanctity hidden within desecration – and vice versa.”
“The pious and the profane may at first seem worlds apart—one immersed in reverent devotion, the other in audacious defiance. Yet they share a potency of feeling that both unsettles and enthralls,” the gallery wrote. “In these acts, devotion and provocation become inseparable, each sparking a pathway toward transcendence.”
Pious & Profane is now on view in Gstaad through March 15, 2025.
Patricia Low Contemporary
Promenade 55,
3780 Gstaad, Switzerland
