Piero Serra
drawings &
photography
pencil on paper
2019 - 2025
This series of drawings was first conceived during a visit to a friend's flat in Berlin. There was a picture - maybe a framed poster - on the wall that I had noticed out of the corner of my eye during dinner, that I imagined was of a face of some kind against a dark background, maybe something like a masked samuri. I didn't look directly at the image as I was talking with the other guests but in my head I was forming a version of what I believed was in the picture. Something about the not-knowing intrigued me, and the image in my head seemed somehow perfect in its vague structure, so when I glanced at the actual picture and saw that it was not at all what I had first imagined, I decided I should attempt to recreate this ghost of an image for myself.
I made several paintings which didn't really come close to what I had envisaged, and a series of drawings followed over the years which have, to be frank, strayed far from the original idea. However, the series has now become a thing-in-itself and the half rendered tragedy and sadness that I mis-remembered from the poster has guided it, my pencil gestures becoming more detailed and yet more sympathetic. There is an architectural quality in the mechanical or technical details of the masks, which have become more like head-dresses as the series grows.