Serrano is notorious for his use of human corpses and bodily fluids to produce his controversial images. His´s works examine the fundamentals of aesthetics and social perception.

Serrano is from a half Honduran, half Afro-Cuban background and was raised as a strict Roman Catholic. He studied from 1967 to 1969 at the Brooklyn Museum and Art School. Later he worked as assistant art director at an advertising firm, before creating his first works in 1983. The artist rose to prominence with his work "Piss Christ", a photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass container of what was purported to be the artist's own urine. The work caused a storm of controversy and was the central element in the so-called culture wars of the late 1980s and 1990s. While Serrano's most famous and notorious work examines the fundamentals of aesthetics, it also challenges the social perception through beautiful images, which are often created from vulgar and sometimes repulsive materials.

Andres Serrano

Andres Serrano is perhaps best known for his unflinching color photographs of controversial subjects including dead bodies, feces, handguns, Ku Klux Klansmen, and Catholic figurines submerged in bodily fluids.

Andes Serrano is known for his fearless color photographs representing controversial subjects, including Ku Klux Klansmen, dead bodies, faces, handguns, and Catholic figurines submerged in bodily fluids.

References to Catholic emblems and doctrine are recurring in Serrano's art. His photographs are carefully composed and appear painterly showing suffused light and saturated colors. The subjects in his photographs are represented on the base of classical sculptural qualities as form, mass and balance.

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“ I don’t think my work is shocking. „

—Andres Serrano