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The American painter cakes her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her era – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece depicts a group of figures trudges mindlessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their path. In another features a person receiving a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, rather than the crowds that follow them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green recline in gilded seats – whereas in additional pieces a pair console each other in a scene strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about that. Back in 2017, her painting Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester demonstrated against the work daily, and some demanded it to be destroyed. An artist of European descent painting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended 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 experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, thick and highly topical painting at the top tier.