Lots 193 to 260 in RR Auction's December Science & Technology sale originate from the robot collection of famed artist Andres Serrano, who came to prominence in the late 1980s with 'Immersion (Piss Christ)' (1987), a photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine. Serrano's work drew the ire of Congress and the praise of critics and collectors alike. For a recent project, he assembled a collection of hundreds of vintage toy robots and created a series of larger-than-life photographic portraits of the uncanny creatures. His exhibition, 'The Robots,' was held at the Baldwin Gallery from June 24-July 24, 2022.
The artist, in his own words:
Before the Metaverse there were Robots.
The word robot was coined by Karel Capek, the Czech novelist and playwright, and appears in his 1920 play, RUR or Rossum's Universal Robots. It derives from an Old Church Slavonic word, "rabota," which means "servitude or forced labor."
Robots are Golems of our making, created to amuse and entertain us, and to work and slave for us; extensions of what we believe in and fear, including the need for humans to have dominium over other humans. There is no end for the ability of Mankind to reinvent itself and stay the same.
The Robots are a race of alien creatures of human and inhuman appearance in manner, form and color. They are the link between childhood and maturity, science fiction and science, existence and Meta existence. They are the future and the past, the crossroad between the real and unreal, the rational and irrational, the good and the bad. They are us.
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