Guido W. Baudach

Yves Scherer: Closer

15 Nov 2014 - 10 Jan 2015

Yves Scherer
Closer
15 November 2014 – 10 January 2015
Opening: Friday, 14 November 2014, 6 pm


Galerie Guido W. Baudach is delighted to present Closer, the first solo exhibition with Swiss born artist Yves Scherer at the gallery.

Taking its title from the British celebrity magazine of the same name with "the latest gossip and stories about real people" the exhibition combines new work in an immersive installation covering both the physical gallery space and its virtual environment: Scherer has taken over the gallery’s website for the duration of the exhibition and turned it into an archive of high-resolution images showing the actress Emma Watson in her leisure time. These images – of her with her boyfriend, taking a stroll with her mother or hanging out with friends – can be accessed, looked at and stored by the visitors.

This play with private and public codes continues in the physical gallery space: images of smoking celebrities pasted on the walls, floor and ceiling of the gallery as well as motivicly related drawings printed on curtains dissolve the room into a hybrid of domestic and virtual space. While Wet Look, a grey-blue carpet covering the entrance and indicating a water pond with artificial lotus flowers, is also joining this confusion of inside and outside.

In the middle of the pond stands a female figure: after a trend in internet memes of posting alleged “leaked” or nude images of Emma Watson – taking her head and collaging it onto another female’s body – Yves Scherer has had his own version of the British actress digitally modelled. Several of these figures populate the gallery space, showing the actress in different situations and moments of assumed privacy. At the same time they could be characters in the fantasies of the other resident: Sharkoon T9, an inhabited computer tower which in varied forms is spread over the room in careful proximity to the Emma Watson-sculptures.

The scenery is surrounded by a series of wall-based sculpture work. The Sirens, Tatami mats, derived from Japanese culture as flooring, respectively multifunctional furniture, and conveying a notion of rest, meditation and ease, are here presented in a shifted context: defaced or marked with gestures of an activity that has occurred, the mats are kept within Perspex. But rather than just acting as containers, the Perspex boxes show traces of interaction, dabs, fragments of words and language written on it – cryptic messages seeming to answer the Sirens’ call.



Yves Scherer, (*1987 in Solothurn, CH) is based in London and Berlin. Solo exhibitions and projects include Coney Island, S.A.L.T.S., Basel; SKYLINE, SSZ Sued, Cologne; Evolution & Comfort, Almanac Projects, London and Nail Care, Times Bar, Berlin. Group exhibitions include New Contemporaries, Institute of Contemporary Art, London and Spike Island, Bristol; Regionale 14, Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel; National Gallery, Grand Century, New York and Aftercare, Center, Berlin. He recently graduated with an MA in Sculpture from London’s Royal College of Art and holds a BA in Sciences of Culture from the University of Lucerne.
 

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