Agnes Scherer

Agnes Scherer (born in 1985, Germany) lives and works in Salzburg and Berlin. She studied painting at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf with Peter Doig and Enrico David.

Scherer’s work develops unique forms of presentation which bring together paintings and handmade artifacts, generating large-scale and holistic installations. Scherer thus creates complex pictorial work that resists immediate objectification and commodification, instead demanding from viewers a heightened level of focus and engagement. Throughout her artistic practice, she interrogates power relations and their underlying psychologies. Drawing from analyses of art history, anthropology, and cultural history, Scherer subverts artistic strategies that originally served the consolidation of power. Using anachronisms and representation of universally known symbols, her work often illustrates the uncanny ways in which historical systems, economies, and societal roles are reflected in the present.

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Selected solo shows include ‘Ein seltsames Spiel’ at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, St. Gallen; ‘Casper a la mode’, PAGE (NYC) at Bel Ami, Los Angeles (2023); ‘Savoir Vivre’ at Heidelberger Kunstverein (2023); ‘A thousand times yes’ at Sans titre, Paris (2022); ‘Fancies’ at PAGE (NYC), New York (2022); ‘The Notebook Simulations’ at Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Dusseldorf (2021); ‘My refuge, my treasure, without body, without measure’ at ChertLüdde, Berlin (2021); ‘Coeurs Simples’ at Sans titre, Paris (2020); ‘ORLANDO TUSSAUD’ at Philipp Haverkampf, Berlin (2019).

Agnes Scherer’s first operetta “Cupid and the Animals”, was awarded the Nigel Greenwood Art Prize in 2015 and performed in, among other places, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne (2017) and TRAMPS in New York (2018). In 2019, her second elaborate work within this format, “The Teacher”, was presented by Kinderhook & Caracas in Berlin, at Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich (2020) and recently in Italy for the festival ART CITY Bologna (2023). Also in 2020, Scherer presented the first part of her third operetta project “The Salty Testament” at 1646 in The Hague. The artist’s narrative installation “The Very Hungry” at the Berlin project space Horse & Pony was granted the Berlin Art Prize (2019).

Agnes Scherer’s works are featured in the permanent collections of important institutions and museums, including FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; KOLUMBA Museum, Cologne and Kunsthaus NRW Kornelimünster in Aachen.