Agnes Scherer at Bel Ami

Artist: Agnes Scherer

Exhibition title: Casper a la mode

Venue: Bel Ami, Los Angeles, US

Date: September 23 – November 4, 2023

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Bel Ami, Los Angeles

Bel Ami invites Page to the west coast, presenting the debut exhibition by Agnes Scherer in Los Angeles. For this collaboration, Agnes has created a series of works on paper, each made up of collaged and cut out layers of drawings in graphite, colored pencil, watercolor, and ink pen. A kite sculpture framing a reclining figure has touched down in the middle of the gallery.

These wild assemblages were made by Agnes during a summer stay in California. Her circus-like productions do not always require the logistics of bulky wooden crates. On this trip, Agnes relies on quick wit, ingenuity, and some well-organized colored pencils packed along for the ride. The special effects of her surfaces achieve the thinness of the paper itself—something even more subtle and simpler could not exist.

Agnes’ pencil marks run back and forth like raindrops dotting a windshield with the occasional crab scurrying across the glass (it’s been raining here in LA lately). Disturbed limbs and wandering faces drift around the page through windows as if bottled up. Paths of lattice networks appear as bars of a cage, but also playful structures, like a gymnastic springboard in a leap! These poor fools mixed and twisted together, seemingly happy and relaxed as their discombobulated heads float around unbothered, even in the presence of malevolent harlequins.

The figures enclosed in these minds do not feel particularly constrained, especially the sirens, who seem to swim around any perceivable obstacle in sight. Jumping into clouds to catch her kite, Agnes makes one contemplate the ecstasy and terror in the heights of events and places that make life worth living. Agnes sees her spectacle through the flesh, less concerned with the stillness of tangible matters in the world, but rather intent on capturing amazing auras arising from subconscious energies, who occasionally wear new trainers or flashy track pants.

Agnes Scherer (b. 1985, Lohr am Main, Germany) lives and works in Salzburg and Berlin. Scherer graduated from the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. Recent solo exhibitions include Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (2023); Heidelberger Kunstverein (2023); Sans Titre, Paris (2022); PAGE (NYC), New York (2022); Kunstverein Dusseldorf (2021); ChertLüdde, Berlin (2021); Sans Titre, Paris (2020); 1646, The Hague (2020); and Cabaret Voltaire, Zürich (2020).

Agnes Scherer, Casper a la mode, 2023, exhibition view, Bel Ami, Los Angeles

Agnes Scherer, The Grove, 2023, graphite, colored pencil, and ink pen on paper, 40 1/4 x 54 1/4 in (102.2 x 137.8 cm)

Agnes Scherer, Casper a la mode, 2023, exhibition view, Bel Ami, Los Angeles

Agnes Scherer, Slumber (a la mode), 2023, watercolor, ink pen, colored pencil, graphite on paper with wood frame and cotton ribbon, 122 3/8 x 64 x 1 1/2 in (310.8 x 162.6 x 3.8 cm)