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The American painter cakes her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. Her first proper London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her era – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that really makes the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece shows a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. A different work presents a person receiving a large disguise in an odd ceremony before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to interpret these as political, as observation on America’s condition, on how society is divided and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a green-clad man sit back in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a landscape filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests naked, desolate and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered art, filled with allusions. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from an animated series). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the work each day, and some demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the biggest story of the biennial. This marked the height of the recent culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world more divided, simplified and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.