Taking the side of things. Patrick Roman Scherer
24.04.-16.05.2026
Opening: 23.04.2026 | 19:00
Lindengasse 51, 1070 Vienna
At the center are things — not the beautiful or the remarkable, but what is simply there. A printer, a shelf, a tennis racket. Objects we use and then forget. In his drawings, Patrick Roman Scherer approaches these everyday items with instinctive attention. He removes them from any spatial context, enlarges them, embeds them in complex ornamental structures. They return in ever-new configurations, gradually forming a growing repertoire, an archive of things.
Taking the Side of Things. The exhibition title traces back to an encounter with Francis Ponge's poetry collection Le parti pris des choses. More literally, the French title might be understood as The Side Taken by Things — the things themselves taking a stand on their own behalf. Ponge's texts attempt to free objects from preconceived meanings and give them a voice of their own. He does not describe them so much as render them into language, allowing their inner life to become visible. Scherer's work follows a similar shift.
Delicate lines orbit the objects, layer over them, pin them in place or release them again. Art-historical and cultural resonances open up: echoes of icons and sacred imagery, of Gothic ornament, textile patterns, and precious tapestries. The drawing mimics surfaces, evoking materiality, density, and texture. Open passages sit alongside dense, ornamental zones. Precision meets freedom, severity meets movement: a sheet of paper seems to fly through space, a tennis racket hangs mid-swing, a split second before impact.
At the same time, drawing itself becomes the central protagonist. Even where painted areas enter the picture, pencil on paper remains the point of departure. The work does not stay within an intimate format but expands outward, spilling into the exhibition space and taking on an installational quality. Individual works enter into dialogue, picking up motifs and carrying them further. The result is not a sequence of separate pieces but a flowing continuum. The spaces between works become active too — sites of transition and repetition where a distinct rhythm takes shape.
It is a play with perception and expectation. What happens when a tennis racket is regarded with the same attention as a precious object? When does a shelf become worthy of depiction, a utilitarian item an image? Tensions do not resolve; they remain in place, holding the work open. From them, a new, shifting order begins to form. Structures appear that seem detached from a clear sense of time and space, where the ordinary and the valuable, the present and the past, exist side by side. Scherer describes this process as something like a messy drawer: disparate things lying next to each other, without hierarchy, and it is precisely this that puts them into new relationships with one another. What first appears accidental follows its own logic, one that only reveals itself over time.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Patrick Roman Scherer (b. 1988 in Kufstein, Austria) lives and works in Vienna. Drawing lies at the core of his artistic practice, particularly pencil on paper and cardboard, which he expands into large-scale works and spatial installations. He completed his studies in Graphic and Printmaking Techniques at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in 2017 and works as a freelance artist with a studio in Vienna. Since then, he has presented his work in numerous solo and group exhibitions both in Austria and internationally.
