YVES SCHERER
IMAGINE
KUNSTRAUM HEILIG GEIST AM UNESCO-WELTERBE ZOLLVEREIN, ESSEN, GERMANY
8 NOVEMBER – 7 DECEMBER 2025
OPENING
8 NOVEMBER 2025, 12 PM
In his new exhibition IMAGINE, Yves Scherer transforms the Kunstraum Heilig Geist into a poetic landscape of sculpture, painting, and light. The New York-based artist stages the space as a delicate, meditative experience.
The exhibition evokes a sense of calm, warmth, and optimism. Figures such as a boy picking flowers, a cat being stroked, or a girl playing with a doll embody everyday moments of affection and connection. Scherer describes them as carriers of a “gentle energy of love and connection”—gestures that remind us of the human touch in small things. In the center stands a large granite sculpture of a boy looking up hopefully—a simple but central image that carries the theme of the exhibition.
Yves Scherer, Cutesy, 2025 © Courtesy of the artist
This quiet, light-filled scene is also an imagined idyll—the antithesis of Scherer's life in the “concrete jungle” of Manhattan. It evokes a longing for a traditional, nature-loving life with family, without tipping over into nostalgia.
The installation is accompanied by Flower Paintings in a salon-like arrangement and two lenticular works that combine motifs from private life with iconic images from pop culture – such as an AI-generated Kate Moss. They expand the sculptural world to include themes such as media identity, fiction, and desire, which have shaped Scherer's work for years.
With subtle humor and formal clarity, Scherer recounts in IMAGINE the quiet moments of happiness, care, and solidarity—and invites us to rediscover our own imagination amid stone, light, and flowers.
The book "Sculptures" is published by Walther und Franz König Verlag to accompany the exhibition.
