Agnes Scherer

Agnes Scherer (born in 1985, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. She studied painting at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf under the supervision of professor Peter Doig.

Scherer’s work develops unique forms of presentation by inscribing handmade artefacts into holistic theatrical frameworks. With her elaborate operettas – of which she writes the scenarios and participate in the conception of the music - and narrative installations, she creates complex pictorial work that resists immediate objectification and commodification, instead demanding from viewers a heightened level of focus and engagement. A persistent questioning that runs through her art- making aims at power relations and their underlying psychologies. Drawing from analyses of art history – the artist has studied it numerous years - anthropological and cultural history, Scherer adopts artistic strategies that originally served the consolidation of power through the hierarchy of representation and repurposes them with critical intent. Using anachronisms and projections, her work often illustrates the uncanny ways in which historical systems, economies and roles are reflected in the present.

Agnes Scherer’s first operetta ‘Cupid and the Animals’ was granted the Nigel Greenwood Art Prize (2015) and presented at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne (2017) as well as by TRAMPS in London (2017) and New York (2018). In 2019, her second elaborate work within this format, ‘The Teacher’, was presented by Kinderhook & Caracas in Berlin and at Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich (2020). Also in October 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). Selected solo shows include ‘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 (2016), Paris (2020); ‘The Teacher’ at Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich (2020); ‘ORLANDOTUSSAUD’ at Philipp Haverkampf, Berlin (2019); ‘Cupid and the Animals’ at TRAMPS, London (2017).