Dialogue in Images

The Corner Gallery in Andes, New York, is thrilled to present Andres Serrano and Jeff Bliumis – Dialogue in Images, an exhibition curated by Filippo Fossati. This show brings together two distinct  artistic voices—not united by style or medium, but by a shared urgency to question the image itself and to reflect on the role of the artist in a time of political distortion and visual saturation.

The exhibition features a previously unseen series of photographs by Andres Serrano. Using dolls, toy soldiers, dinosaurs, and miniature animals, Serrano creates scenes that are raw, violent, uncanny, and disturbingly real. These familiar childhood objects are transformed into disquieting images that seem to unfold beyond the artist’s control—as if summoned from a dream or nightmare—where imagination becomes a form of critique. With his camera, Serrano activates an optical mechanism that renders the visible grotesque, burlesque, even absurd, while  revealing deeper, often uncomfortable truths that lie beneath the surface.

In contrast, Jeff Bliumis’s paintings offer a quieter yet equally resonant terrain. His works transcend trends and self-seriousness, capturing human experience with lightness, irony, and poetic precision. Housed in sculptural bronze frames integral to the composition, his small-format canvases blend figures, landscapes, and love scenes into layered, symbolic spaces. Bliumis’s hybrid visual language—both image and object—offers warmth, wit, and understated social commentary. For him, painting becomes not just a surface but a vessel: one that carries allegory, play, and reflection.

“These are not simply images,” writes curator Filippo Fossati. “They are visual texts—symbolic systems that resist neutrality. Serrano and Bliumis do not affirm the world as it is. They interpret it, reimagine it, and challenge its surface. Their works construct alternate realities that act as metaphors, provocations,  and invitations to see differently.”

The contrast in scale—Serrano’s monumental photographs versus Bliumis’s intimate paintings—creates a visual rhythm that guides the viewer from near to far, from material intensity to conceptual resonance. Here, representation is not passive but charged with symbolic and poetic meaning, inviting active engagement.

“At its core, Dialogue in Images is more than a juxtaposition of two artistic practices,” Fossati continues. “Beneath their formal contrast lies a deeper inquiry: What is the role of the artist today? What does it mean to create images in a world oversaturated with them? Can art still act, still matter? Or has it become just another commodity—an accessory, a luxury item, stripped of its critical force?”

Dialogue in Images reflects on the responsibility of image-making in a world overwhelmed by spectacle, speed, and simulation. This exhibition is a call to attention—a quiet act of resistance rooted in imagination. A reminder that to imagine is to resist, and that nothing—politically, artistically, or humanly—changes without first being imagined otherwise.

Andres Serrano (b. 1950, New York City) is an internationally renowned American artist whose work investigates themes of religion, violence, death, identity, and political power through constructed imagery across various media. Trained in painting and sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, Serrano considers himself “an artist who happens to use a camera.” He has exhibited widely around the world, with solo shows at institutions such as the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris), the Barbican Centre (London), and Fotografiska (Stockholm and New York). His work is held in major public collections including The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Jeff Bliumis (b. 1958, Chișinău, Moldova) is a multidisciplinary artist living and working between New York City and the Catskills. He studied at Columbia University and the University of California, Berkeley—and, during school breaks, explored another kind of curriculum: the alchemy of transforming daily contradictions into creative matter. Rooted in Picabia’s motto—“If you want to have clean ideas, change them as often as you change your underwear”—his work spans painting, sculpture, and participatory projects, often engaging with questions of identity, language, and community. Moving between Soviet and American cultural legacies, Bliumis explores the spaces of translation—linguistic, visual, and emotional. His work has been presented at venues such as the Jewish Museum (New York), the State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg), and the Guangzhou Triennial (China).

Filippo Fossati (b. 1965, Torino, Italy) is an Italian art expert, gallery owner, curator, and writer with a long-standing connection to contemporary art. He co-founded Il Quadrante publisher in the 1980s and several influential art magazines. He opened his first gallery in Turin in 1988 and co-founded Esso Gallery in New York, which ran from 1996 to 2009. He has curated numerous exhibitions globally, working with leading artists across a variety of media, and collaborates with public and private collections. He was a curatorial advisor for the National Academy Museum & School in New York, where he also taught from 2012 to 2017. Recent exhibitions include Mario Schifano: Germinal at Magazzino Italian Art in 2024, where he served as Director from 2023 to 2024.