“Tu mi fai rimembrar dove e qual era
Proserpina nel tempo che perdette
La madre lei, ed ella primavera.”
Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, canto XXVIII, verses 49-51
Dante’s portrayal of the figure of Matelda in the terrestrial Paradise has been variously interpreted as an image of primeval innocence, as the donna angelicata of the stilnovo tradition, as the biblical typology of the active/contemplative life or as a representation of human wisdom. Seeing her here on his journey into purgatory, she reminds him of Ovid’s description of Proserpina gathering the flowers of spring, just
before she is violently abducted by Pluto and coerced into becoming the reluctant Queen of Hades…
In his artistic practice, Scherer straddles the nexus of Pop art with a technologically inflected neo-classicism. As part of a larger multi-media practice that includes figurative sculpture and traditional oil painting, the artist here presents examples of his on-going and most prominent series of lenticular work. In these images, he exploits our collective emotional attachments to the elusive muses of the present, here a latter-day Matelda: a very young Kate Moss, photographed in private by her then lover Mario Sorrenti.
At first Scherer’s approach seems dispassionate, but it becomes clear that he is playfully undermining the male gaze with a childlike fantasy and a Romantic vision that blends the public and the private domain within the real-time framework of exhibition making. AS IT IS IN HEAVEN then is a poetic refuge where he draws you into a tangibly idealised world of natural beauty and innocence, but within finely-calibrated and sophisticated artificial structures.
Each work is made up of twenty six frames, which purposefully slows down one’s experience of each image’s shifting composition. Colouring Mario Sorrenti’s original photographs and layering them with simple pictures of meadows he took on his iphone with his family in Provence, the Swiss mountains or on a walk through Central Park, the reality of each becomes blurred, a trademark of his practice, which when conceived of as a whole exhibition, becomes a kind of multi-faceted fanzine, merging a mainstream obsession with celebrity and modern-day hero worship with autobiography and fictional memories.
His process lends an optical depth unlike any other analogue object, while at the same time functioning within the tradition of portraiture. The intimacy and private nature of the photographs, whose publication nevertheless cemented an idea of ‘Kate Moss’as an eternal and perfect ideal of young beauty, quite separate from the real person, lends them a bittersweet aura. Here even her private self is for sale…as was Prosperina. ‘…ed ella Primavera.’
– Katharine Kostyál
Yves Scherer, ‘As It Is In Heaven’, Press Release
Yves Scherer was born in 1987 in Solothurn, Switzerland and lives and works in New York. He holds an MA in Sculpture from The Royal College of Art, London. His work has been shown at a variety of international institutions, including the ICA London; Futura, Prague; Grand Palais, Paris, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel; and Basement Roma, Rome. In 2015, Scherer was the recipient of the Swiss Art Award. Recent solo exhibitions include ’Eternity’, Galería Mascota, Mexico City (2023); ‘Tennis Elbow’ 116 The Journal Gallery, New York (2023); ‘New York Minute’, Galleri Golsa, Oslo (2023); ‘Goodnight Moon’, ’Family Time’, Galerie Guido W. Baudach, Berlin (2021) and ‘By Your Side’ and Cassina Projects, Milan (2021)