Alumna Dana Schutz '02 in Solo Exhibition at Petzel Gallery

By
Logan Reed
January 16, 2019

Alumna Dana Schutz '02 is has a solo exhibition at Petzel Gallery in Chelsea from January 10 through February 23, 2019. Entitled, Imagine Me and You, the exhibition is her third at the gallery and features paintings and sculptures. The exhibition will mark the first time Schutz has exhibited sculptures.

/////oil painting of two men in a small boat.

The Petzel Gallery describes Imagine Me and You as depicting “strange terrain where clouds hover like rocks, ground is composed of jawbones, and mountains suspend writhing histories and political dilemma. Here, characters travel in groups or pairs, their features pocked and marred by exterior forces or molded by interior psychic malady. Alone and often monstrous, they struggle to inhabit their own image. Their figuration is informed by their task at hand and own felt sensation—a fishlike runner tries to escape her body on an endless treadmill, a lecturer giving a Ted Talk feels her face as she shapes it, and a multi-limbed painter tries to hold up her studio and canvas while the walls tumble in an earthquake."

The New York Times describes Schutz as being known for “her inventive and muscular way of shaping space on canvas,” and that “emotion and empathy seem to drive her work.”

Schutz herself says she’s “ interested in how something feels, rather than how it looks.” She’s been influenced by a range of artists from Masaccio to German Expressionists Otto Dix and Max Beckmann, as well as the French Realist Gustave Courbet.

According to Petzel, "Schutz was born in 1976 in Livonia, Michigan. She has been the subject of museum exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Schutz’s recent solo exhibitions include Eating Atom Bombs at the Transformer Station, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland (2018); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2017); Musée d’art contemporain de Montéal (2015); Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover (2014); Hepworth Wakefield Museum, Wakefield, United Kingdom (2013); Miami Art Museum; Denver Art Museum (2012)."

A painting of a suited man and a skull.