Yves Scherer: Provence

M. LeBlanc is proud to present Provence, an exhibition of work by the Swiss-born New York-based artist Yves Scherer. The exhibition marks Scherer’s debut exhibition at the gallery in Chicago. Comprising the exhibition are new works of painting, sculpture, and lenticular photography.

Provence, Scherer’s apt title for the exhibition is named after the famed southern French region, storied not only for its annual cavalcades of tourists but also for its magical light and bucolic flowered landscapes, both of which are iconic subjects in the histories of modern art. Scherer’s use of the region is simply a gesture, a placeholder of memory and attachment, and a shared source of where together we create memories, for ourselves, our families, and our futures. Provence is a space that’s as real and historic as it is performative. It’s in this superfiction that Scherer shaped this most recent body of work.

In the midst of the pandemic, Scherer forged a new approach to his painting. Where he had made numerous large airbrush works in the past, this new body of work draws inspiration from historic Swiss landscape painters like Adolf Dietrich or Hans Emmenegger, whose works dot the artist's early life in the Swiss canton of Solothurn. Large horizontal swaths of muddled green, orange, and yellow, are sparsely separated by lone sets of poppies and peonies, each work representative of the elusiveness of recollection. Like all the work exhibited in Provence, at stake for Scherer is a multivalent intersection between nativity or ‘being at home’, the ever-malleable ideals of beauty, and the construction of oneself.

Past works of Scherer’s prefaced these concepts through a use of celebrity figures - like Vincent Cassel, Kate Moss, or Emma Watson. In Provence the focus shifts from the figure as content to the literal ground, the landscape where the imagination or the desire of belonging takes hold, and the something we call ourselves becomes real and mythical all at once. 

Yves Scherer (Swiss, b. 1987 in Solothurn) lives and works in New York. Recent solo and group exhibitions of Scherer’s work include Yves Scherer (2023) at Tennis Elbow at The Journal Gallery in New York (on view through May 11, 2023), New York Minute (2023) at Galerie Golsa in Oslo, Norway, Goodnight Moon (2022) at The Journal Gallery in Patmos, Greece, Ce qui emporte la décision (2022) at Ceysson & Bénétière in Paris, Louisa Gagliardi & Yves Scherer (2022) at Eva Presenhuber in New York, Leaves of Grass (2020) at Galleri Golsa in Oslo, Candids (2020) at Kunsthaus Grenchen in Grenchen, CH, and Sunset (2019) at Kunstverein Wiesen in Wiesen, Germany. Scherer’s work has been curated in many institutional group exhibitions as well, including Swiss Performance Now (2018) at Kunsthalle Basel, Whistles of Surfaces(2016) at the Point Centre of Contemporary Art in Nicosia, Cyprus, and New Contemporaries (2013) at the ICA Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. The artist has received numerous awards including the Cahier d‘ Artistes, Pro Helvetia in 2016 and the Swiss Art Award at Art Basel in 2015. Scherer received an M.A. in Sculpture from Royal College of Art in London (2014) and a B.A. from the University of Lucerne (2011).