Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg
23 May – 17 July 2026
Agnes Scherer's exhibition Three Wicked Games is based on an inventory of contemporary obsessions and allows them to flow backwards or sideways into two so-called tapestry designs by Francisco Goya: The Blind Man's Cow Game (1789) and The Jumping Jack (1791). Both show popular games.
The artist recognizes in these games a structure that seems uncannily contemporary. In both compositions, a powerless figure is at the centre. Someone is blind, someone is thrown, someone laughs, and someone is waiting for their turn. Scherer adds a third, imagined scene to these games, which also suggests a game.
Scherer translates these images into a ghostly puppet theatre. While she quotes the compositions almost one-to-one, she deprives the figures of their physicality. The intact figure no longer feels right, says Scherer. It belongs to a fantasy of coherence that can no longer be redeemed by the present. What interests the artist more than the body is life under the conditions of late capitalism, which is characterized by a cycle of profit-oriented transactions and ongoing dependencies.
Curated by Mirela Baciak.