Normandy Impressionist Exhibition Diana SCHERER, “Light in the nets

At Caen's Saint-Nicolas church, Diana Scherer's work unfolds as a singular form of garden - born of a collaboration between human intention and the forces of nature. Created for Normandie Impressionniste 2026 and conceived as a tribute to Claude Monet, this exhibition questions our contemporary relationship with the plant world, on the borderline between freedom and control, nature and artifice.

The theme of the festival, A Possible Garden, has a particular resonance here. Diana Scherer's garden is neither ornamental nor domesticated. It emerges from a slow, patient process in which roots become lines, patterns and surfaces. Rather than directly shaping plant matter, the artist creates the conditions for its growth, guiding without dominating. The living organism acts, resists and negotiates. The work is born of this tension.

This approach echoes Monet's own practice, for whom the garden was at once a refuge, a laboratory and a work of art in itself. At Giverny, Monet would compose a landscape and then paint it over and over again, balancing careful observation of nature with deliberate intervention. The Impressionist garden was not a wild space: it was designed and orchestrated, while remaining subject to unpredictability - the light, the wind, the seasons, the weather.

Installed in the church of Saint-Nicolas, these works invite visitors to slow down, to observe what grows beyond immediate human control. The work reflects an era marked by the control of living things: artificial soils, standardised plants, controlled and optimised landscapes, often deprived of their capacity for surprise. In the face of this desire for excessive control, the artist proposes another path - one of dialogue, of letting go and trusting in natural processes. Constrained by structures designed by the artist, the roots generate forms that evoke textiles and architecture as much as drawing.

• Free