Serolod Reality is Relative

Reality is Relative

Look closer, and you discover that each form is profoundly connected to everything around it. Einstein's theory of general relativity is a crucial touchstone for the artist. Her work is a means of exploring this idea, delving into the minute details to reveal how everything is more intertwined than it seems.

Each work begins as a photo. Using an editing platform, the artist digitally manipulates the images, searching for the right color palette. Engaging with color theory, she prefers tones that feel unnatural, creating an uncanny effect. While many use editing software to improve the quality of their photos, perfecting them, she finds herself doing the opposite. Her edits ultimately cause the quality of the photo to degrade. The artist describes this as a destructive force, “the pixels getting burned.” By breaking down representations of reality, she creates a new one, completely her own. Through the process of editing, a unique texture emerges, resembling a brushstroke. The artist then replicates this simulacrum of a brushstroke, transposing the digital image in oil paint. This practice highlights the tension between the virtual and the physical, demonstrating the subjectivity of perception and the malleability of reality.

Serolod refers to these edited photos as prototypes. They have been the foundation of much of her work. Her prototypes allow her to explore the unlimited possibilities of representation with an authentically Gen-Z sensibility. Serolod is part of the generation who grew up with phones and computers, photography and editing have been fascinations since she was a child. Technology, first a toy, became a means of creation, a revolutionary toolkit for a young artist.

Recently, however, Serolod has been thinking about increasing the distance between her paintings and the prototypes. While still using them, she has sought to put herself in conversation with each work, letting it evolve in a more liberated way. She has been interested in “thinking through painting,” using the medium as a form both of reflection and of communication. For the artist, there is a mystery at the heart of her work. Perhaps the painting is alive, or it holds life, the energy transferred from the painter through hours of labor. Her recent paintings aim to tap into this inexplicable, almost mystical element, that also connects to the artist’s interest in science and philosophy.

The soul of these works lies in the relationship between things—figures, objects, the space between them. In Daydream, two figures clasp hands; it is the depiction of a single moment, frozen in time. The swirling colors evoke the transformation of energy between two people. The painting crackles with electric intensity, making visible something we would normally only feel. In Metamorphosis a figure crouches on a table. The room around her is alive, transforming what could be a depiction of solitude into something deeper. Joining together philosophy, science, and painting, the artist’s molecular style and use of photography explores the limits of perception and the true interdependence of all things, to demonstrate that we’re never alone. Serolod’s works are both depictions of a single moment and reflections on the universe itself.

— Louisa Mahoney, researcher