Interview With Andrew Sendor by Saša Bogojev

By SAŠA BOGOJEV November 19, 2025

New York-based artist Andrew Sendor has recently debuted a new body of work at Newchild Gallery in Antwerp, Belgium—his first solo exhibition in Europe in over a decade. Widely recognized for his extraordinary facility in representational painting, Sendor’s enigmatic works have drawn the attention of a global audience. This new body of work continues his pursuit of fictional world-building and reaffirms his unique contribution to contemporary painting.

On the occasion of Sendor’s exhibition titled RIVER, writer and curator Saša Bogojev interviewed the artist, resulting in a dynamic conversation about a range of topics that are central to Sendor’s artistic practice.

Saša Bogojev:

For your current European solo show with Newchild in Antwerp, as well as for your previous presentations, you've written an entire narrative from which you build the work. But instead of "just" giving images to stories, as William Blake did in the past and many others did or still do today, you're taking a different route to your visuals. Can you guide us through the process and the interests or reasoning behind it?

Andrew Sendor:

Thank you for this contextually aware question, and I appreciate the William Blake reference, as I hold this Romantic visionary in high regard. As you eloquently stated, the paintings are certainly not created to illustrate a story; rather, the story functions as a foundation from which I endeavor to build a new world.

Each body of work begins when I suddenly envision a character or a group of characters in a specific setting. This vision prompts a writing process that describes what I have internally witnessed. Once the narrative arc has taken form, I then imagine who can potentially play the roles of the characters, which evolves into a kind of casting process. From there, I collaborate with performance artists, orchestrating performative events that involve set design, controlled lighting conditions, curated costumes, hairstyles, and makeup—all of which define each character. These live performances are more than mere enactments; they are transformative acts that bring the fictional world to life, allowing me to materially articulate its essence.

Installation view of Andrew Sendor’s solo exhibition RIVER at Newchild, Antwerp. 2025
Photo Credit: Jan Liegeois

Bogojev:

For a painter, it isn’t common to delve into writing, casting, photography, and become involved in what is almost a full theatrical production as part of the creative process. Do you happen to have an idea where your interest in such an elaborate and expansive approach comes from?

Sendor:

While I’m intimately involved in writing, character development, photography, and other areas, this multifaceted process has evolved over time. In the beginning, I often played the roles of certain characters, which was productive but also became limiting, as I lost interest in the self- portraiture component. Once I transitioned to working with performance artists, I found greater latitude within the process; directing, rather than acting, allowed me to further develop each character’s psychology and emotional range. As far as the scale of this multistep approach—it’s simply a matter of doing whatever is necessary to transpose my imagination into tangible form.

Bogojev:

Your painterly practice has a firm footing in realism, a concept that is as old as (oil) painting itself. But again, you're resolutely not looking at reality, preferring instead to create your own, perhaps surreal, cinematic, or more precisely, photographic one first. Why is it essential for you to work from a photograph instead of from life, and how many photos did you end up making while working on RIVER?

Installation view of Andrew Sendor’s solo exhibition RIVER at Newchild, Antwerp. 2025
Photo Credit: Jan Liegeois

Sendor:

The points you raise guide me into the next phase of my process, which is editing the hundreds of photos after each performative event. The documentation of these acts ultimately functions as source material, which leads me to the task of translating the ephemeral nature of live action into the permanence of painted imagery.

When looking at realism within the broader context of representational painting, my approach is not necessarily determined by traditional motives rooted in mimetic representation. My motivation lies in depicting moments within the fictional narrative through a painting process governed by a high degree of specificity—one driven by the desire to make these characters feel as though they truly exist. It’s more about presence than mimicry.

Regarding your question about the number of photos in this body of work: there were eleven performative events that I orchestrated, which produced a total of 9,281 documentary images.

Bogojev:

I always felt that realism was primarily about technical skill. However, after speaking with you recently, I learned that there is a great deal of philosophical curiosity behind your practice. Did one influence the other, or in what way or order did your interests develop or evolve?

Sendor:

For me, the act of making art is creating another world. My aim is to describe details within these worlds—atmosphere, texture, psychological weight—so they feel navigable, lived-in, and experientially real. The deeper I go, and the more time I spend in these worlds, the more information becomes known—eventually becoming visible in the paintings. In this regard, there is a peculiar dynamic between imagination and perception, which brings to mind ideas expressed by Jean-Paul Sartre in The Imaginary (1940), where he posits that the mechanisms of the imagination operate as a conscious act that liberates the mind by negating shared reality—unlike perception, which is rooted in the direct observation of that which is materially present. I love the idea of moving in and out of these seemingly contrasting acts throughout the various stages of my process, and as such, I am comfortable knowing that the paintings do not settle neatly within a single, linear thesis.

“The Offliners” by River Wright
2025
oil on matte white plexiglass in tiger maple artist’s frame
56.5 x 63 cm
22 1/4 x 24 3/4 inches
Courtesy the artist and Newchild, Antwerp

Bogojev:

Some of my favorite moments in the current exhibition, as well as your recent practice in general, are the "glitches" you purposely add to your paintings, your choice to work on matte white plexiglass, or the particular framing choices you made for each individual work. Could you please tell us more about these elements?

Sendor:

The “glitches” you speak of are extremely important. These fractures or disruptions in the surfaces originate from my general conception of contemporary images as inherently unstable. Over the past decade, I’ve been thinking hard about how the mechanisms of image distribution and consumption function in today’s society compared to the pre-digital era. Looking back further, a pivotal moment in the history of image-making is the invention of the camera in mid-19th-century France. As the science of photography evolved from the early Daguerreotypes of the 1840s, critics began to contrast painting's overt subjectivity with the mechanical precision and speed of the camera. Since then, this debate has persisted in various forms.

For decades, printed photographs were widely regarded as objective records of reality— documents captured with the clinical neutrality of a machine.This notion prevailed until the 1970s, when consensus began to shift, with writers and critics such as Susan Sontag arguing that photographic objectivity is itself a cultural construct and not a mere reflection of the real but an interpretation shaped by framing, context, and ideology.

What particularly interests me, however, is the monumental evolution in photography from the analog to the digital. With the rise of graphics-editing software, manipulating photos became quick and accessible, contributing to an environment saturated with a relentless flow of images disseminated through a constant stream of social media platforms and various apps. This shift creates a peculiar situation in which our collective faith in the truthfulness of images has become profoundly compromised.

As I paint my way through images, I am motivated to call attention to the fact that each visual object I create contains human nuance. My express intent is not to copy a photo but rather to participate in a search that combines the language of painting with the spirit of the ideas discussed above. As such, my painted surfaces are fractured, skewed, asymmetric, and subtly distorted—slipping within their own compositions.

An almost imperceptible hum, as if the land itself had awakened with them.
2025
oil on matte black plexiglass in welded aluminum floater frame
45 x 37 cm
18 x 14 inches

Bogojev:

You mentioned framing and context, and another important aspect of your work—and how you present it— is your choice of materials: namely, using matte white plexiglass as the support and the specific framing choices you make for each individual piece. What is the idea behind these particular decisions and choices?

Sendor:

These decisions that you highlight about materials are of great consequence. At this point, I often refer to my works as objects that contain painted images rather than paintings. Each piece in constructed not only from the imagery but also from a measured consideration of its objecthood and materiality, its physical presence in the world. For me, the mounting and framing are integral to the work’s identity, every square centimeter is considered.

The support on which the paintings are executed—matte white plexiglass—is itself a material choice that defines the physical character of the work. Its absolute surface allows me to achieve both a high level of detail and sharp edges along the perimeter of the painted imagery, which are created using various tapes. Once the paintings are completed, they are then mounted onto various species of wood, each stained with a mixture of satin varnish and oil pigments — a custom solution I’ve developed after numerous experiments. They are then set within either a wooden or aluminum-welded frame. For this part of the process, I work closely with two fabricators: one who handles all the woodwork, following my specifications for the wood species and stain colors, and the other who fabricates the aluminum welded frames.

The air felt close, almost metallic, as if the storm above was holding its breath
2025
oil on matte white plexiglass in white powder aluminum floater frame
70 x 57 cm
27 1/4 x 22 1/2 inches

Bogojev:

The questions like "How do we see and interpret the world?”, "How do we trust images?", or essentially, "What does it mean to see?" seem to influence your entire approach. This all began when AI was still in the realm of science fiction, and a few weeks ago, during our video studio visit, we mentioned how quickly that has changed in recent years, if not months. In the meantime, software like Sora has taken over, and I've been thinking about the old question, "Is seeing believing?”—and how all of this lends even more weight and importance to a practice like yours. What are your thoughts on how your work is aging or evolving alongside such rapid and tectonic technological developments?

Sendor:

I will begin addressing this multi-part question by considering the nature of film. One of the crucial aspects of watching a film is how we go about suspending our disbelief. This act— whereby we consciously allow ourselves to accept fiction as reality for the duration of the film— has, perhaps inadvertently, found its way into everyday life, particularly as AI becomes increasingly mainstream, as you noted. There is a key distinction to be made here: when we go to the cinema, the expectation is such that we are willing to be absorbed into an alternate reality— the reality of the film. If the acting and overall production carry a high level of convincingness, we are willing to slip into the reality of the film and even forego incongruities at certain moments.

However, this suspension becomes ethically complex when we are not in an explicitly fictional context. For example, encountering a video on social media of a seemingly real event— especially when we cannot immediately ascertain whether the content has been edited or altered —compels us to reappraise our relationship to images and videos more broadly. This leads me to think about Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation as it relates to the risk of inhabiting a world of hyperreality, in which representations no longer correspond to any tangible referent, but rather create their own truth-effects. In this highly uncertain media environment, truth is slippery, and subjectivity increasingly overrides any stable notion of objectivity.