Diana Scherer (DE, 1971) is internationally regarded as a pioneer in biotech art. Fascinated by plant root systems and their natural growth process, she has made them her working material. She creates artificial biotopes in her studio, using soil, seeds, light and subterranean templates to grow her root art. She ‘harvests’ her work, as she calls it, creating new organic fabrics, textiles. Apical is Diana Scherer’s first solo exhibition at the gallery.

In her templates, Scherer combines the geometric principles of nature with basic manmade patterns from her surroundings. She assembles her compositions from repetitive shapes: the cell structures of plants, circles like annual rings of a tree, squares and traces of car tyres. Thought-provoking and urgent, Scherer’s work portrays the human urge to control nature, and the limitations of that control.
She takes a poetic approach to ecological issues and, with her work, takes a step closer towards a utopian partnership in which humans and nature co-create.

Her latest commission is currently on view in Manifesta 15, Metropolitana Barcelona for which Scherer grew a monumental work that examines the legacy of Barcelona’s textile industry. Her work is also currently featured in the exhibition ‘The call of the o’o. Nature under pressure’ at Allard Pierson Museum and ‘The New Mother Sculptures’ at the Cobra Museum. She recently had a solo ‘Farming Textiles’ at Museum Kranenburgh, Bergen.
Other recent exhibitions include ‘Into the Woods. Perspectives on Forest Ecosystems’ as part of Klima Biennale Wien, KUNST HAUS WIEN, Museum Hundertwasser, Vienna and ‘Gene Cultures’, MIT Museum, Cambridge, USA.
In early 2025, she will participate in the exhibition ‘Soil’ at Somerset House, London and later that year in ‘More Than Human’, Design Museum, London.