In 2004, the New York artist Andres Serrano walked into Trump Tower with his camera to photograph Donald Trump. He spent 30 minutes shooting the president as part of his America photo series.

Fifteen years later, this portrait is the centerpiece of an exhibition in New York called The Game: All Things Trump, where Serrano has put his collection of about 1,000 pieces of Trump memorabilia on view. From a slice of Donald and Melania’s wedding cake to Trump golf balls, signed magazine covers and a Taj Mahal casino roulette table, the artist spent roughly $200,000 buying this all on eBay. It’s what the artist considers a colossal portrait of Trump.

Just don’t call it “memorabilia”. “I call it a collection that was bought for a reason to become an installation,” said Serrano in the Chelsea art space (the former Lotus nightclub). “For me, it’s an installation. I spent a year on it. I knew I had to, because it’s a portrait of Donald Trump, one that is as inclusive and as big as possible, I knew I had to go big with it.”

Fittingly, Trump’s book Think Big is on view, alongside a 10ft rotating sculpture that spells out the word “EGO”, which once stood in the Trump Taj Mahal Ego lounge in Atlantic City.

Right out of the Trump rulebook, the artist has mastered the Art of the Deal. “That sculpture was $7,000, I talked them down from $10,000,” said Serrano. “I always ask to negotiate a better price. Most people gave me a better price.”

Serrano’s collection on view also includes Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, a fake dollar bill showing Hillary Clinton behind bars which is signed by the president and a Trump University diploma. Although the president’s pseudo school is now defunct, could this exhibit be a fanboy’s show-and-tell or the subliminal underbelly of a dreamer who got too big for his britches?

The artist pauses. “I’m trying to show Donald Trump through the eyes of Donald Trump, through everything he has created or has been created for him, that has been written about him,” said Serrano. “One thing I feel this exhibition shows is that Donald Trump didn’t appear out of nowhere. He didn’t become president by campaigning in 2016. In a way, he has been campaigning his whole life. He wanted his name to become something. And it did. This is a love affair, or a love-hate affair America has had with Donald Trump for many years.”

The Game: All Things Trump. Photograph: Courtesy of a/political and ArtX. Photo by John Mireles

The magazine covers track Trump’s rise in real estate in the 1980s, his downfall into bankruptcy in 1990, his affair with Marla Maples (the notorious New York Post cover, where she supposedly declares: “Best Sex I’ve Ever Had”) and his segue into reality TV, and then presidency. “Something I noticed is that they’re not positive stories, but they’re cover stories,” said Serrano. “One thing Trump has said about all this coverage is that it doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad press, he just wants you to talk about him. He’s been very successful in that. It’s a whole ‘I don’t care what you say about me, just say something.’”

It could tie into Serrano’s own courtship for controversy himself. He had an onslaught of criticism for his Piss Christ artwork in 1987, where he put a plastic crucifix in a tank of urine, which was vandalized by Christian protesters in 2011. The artist recently mounted an exhibition that traces the history of torture, from medieval dungeons to Abu Ghraib, and in the past, has photographed the Ku Klux Klan.

He knows how to make bold statements, though he’s not averse to media coverage. “I am happy to be in the media when I have something to say and prefer also for people to understand what I’m saying,” he said. “I see criticism of my work before an exhibition has opened. People are opening their mouths without seeing the work. I think that’s unfair. I prefer people to have opinions about my work after seeing it.”

A report found 15% of Trump’s products are made in the US, which goes against the president’s “Buy American and Hire American” approach. His trumpstore.com products are made in 12 countries, including Mexico, Turkey, India and Vietnam. “It’s an odd thing nobody has really called him out on,” said Serrano. “Most of his things have been made abroad.”

Though Trump has a website selling products that range from Mother’s Day candles to briefcases, the artist did not collect much from there except “some Hershey’s kisses with the presidential seal”, said Serrano. Most of the memorabilia dates to the 1980s.

Trump Steaks. Photograph: Courtesy of a/political and ArtX

“I was mostly interested in vintage Trump,” he said. “I think from a historical point, the past is always precious because it shows artefacts of how we got to this point, this story.”

It’s more than just random objects, they each detail a kind of narrative to the artist, including a Trump comic book and his Mad magazine cover, not to mention the Newsweek cover of Hillary’s predicted victory, which was then discarded. “All the pieces, the game, the products, especially those with the American flag, all show that Donald Trump positioned himself as an all-American hero, decades ago,” said Serrano. “He has remained that hero to many people.”

It isn’t all vintage, though, as Maga hats are in the exhibit, which are matched up with Taj Mahal casino security outfits. Together, they look a tad like military uniforms and, fittingly, they all stand around the portrait Serrano took of Trump in 2004. “I just put the uniformed guards around protecting the president,” he said.

“It all revolves around here,” he said, pointing to the “EGO” sign in the middle of the gallery.

“All people have egos,” says Serrano, “but I think Donald Trump has one of the biggest egos; he’s not only the president and the most powerful person on Earth, he’s the person we think about and talk about the most.”

When asked what he loves and hates the most about Trump, Serrano says it’s that exactly – his ego. “You can both love it and hate it at the same time,” he said.

That relates to the artist’s own ego, too. “As an artist, you have to believe in yourself,” said Serrano. “You have to have an ego, so you don’t give up.”

Despite Trump’s recent comments on a Boeing rebrand, he built a brand which paved his way to the presidency. “Trump says a lot of contradictory things, he says he knows nothing about branding, but he knows a lot about branding,” said Serrano. “He respects branding, his branding means success.”

There is one thing that Serrano couldn’t get for the exhibition: he wanted a Bible signed by Trump. “He was signing Bibles a few weeks ago in Alabama,” he says. “I would love for him to sign my Bible one day. If I could speak to the president, I’d say ‘Mr President, please sign my Bible for your exhibition. I need you to sign it with a gold magic marker.’”

Serrano claims to have voted for Obama, but is clearly providing an antidote to the flurry of anti-Trump art in America. “It’s political work that can be easily dismissed as propaganda,” he said. “I prefer work that is more ambivalent, more complicated, loaded. It’s more interesting when it’s not this or that way. Why can’t it be both?”