Dana Schutz Trouble and Appearance

Doubtlessly the oeuvre of New York based American artist Dana Schutz (born in 1976) internationally has been marking for more than two decades one of the most impressive positions in recent figurative painting. With her resonant imagery she continuously succeeds in drawing us into her compositionally intense paintings – making us loose ourselves in fantastic worlds full of mysteries and allegories. At first glance it seems as though her imagery is far removed from our everyday experience. However, this appearance is misleading and therein precisely lies its subversive artistic strength. Dana Schutz’s pictorial narratives, with their very own playful lightness, hold up the mirror of our existence before our eyes. In the euphoric swirls of her paints minor and major mishaps and even tragedies dressed as modern myths present themselves posing questions that beg to be answered.

In parallel to her paintings, Dana Schutz has always reflected on her pictorial narratives in her print series. Her virtuoso and innovative handling of different graphic techniques allows her to explore a certain image in various artistic media, to reflect on the results, and to find new compositional solutions. Often she will revisit a motif in her prints and modify it thematically. Rarely do we get the chance to experience this closely pulsating artistic innovations. In her most recent large-scale delicate monotypes Dana Schutz explores human and interpersonal states of being. At times, her painterly gestures become so extreme that her narratives dissolve into abstract extravaganzas of paint.

In her Munich debut at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Dana Schutz for the first time places the focus on her drawings. Never before did she present sketches, studies, and preparatory drawings in such high density in an exhibition. Surely, in her latest works on paper Dana Schutz has outdone herself permitting us a rare glance of her master drawings. Her large-scale drawings in charcoal on paper are reminiscent, for good reason, of murals of the American avant-gardes, foremost among them the Abstract Expressionists of the New York School that draw us in. In Munich, Dana Schutz’s mural drawings celebrate their premiere.

With this project the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung once more explores the position of the art of drawing in the twenty-first century as a driving force within the fine arts and questions drawing’s role as an existential mode of expression of human intellect and creative powers. Superbly, Dana Schutz’s master drawings demonstrate in the interplay with her paintings that the innovative powers of the art of drawing have lost none of their vitality.