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The American painter smothers her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. This first proper London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her generation – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. A different work presents a person given a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green recline in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a landscape strewn with dead bodies, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests naked, desolate and helpless in bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with references. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of a Belgian artist, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to mainstream media (It seems certain that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in the mid-20th century – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist demonstrated against the work each day, and others called for it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a image of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her career, and the artist likely aims to move on. But all her subsequent work since exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.