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The American painter smothers her canvases in thick gobs of gooey paint. Her inaugural London show is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

Schutz's Approach

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her era – is focused on surface, brush strokes, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s plenty to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that really makes the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the first gallery are full of enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. A different work features a person receiving a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual in front of a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on societal splits and furious, and crowd psychology is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that support them. Shadowy figures fill their faces with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green recline in golden chairs – whereas in other works a pair comfort one another in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, rests unclothed, desolate and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with references. There’s the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of Philip Guston, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to analysis. 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 public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a partly abstract representation of the body of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by racist perpetrators in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was shown at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the painting daily, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. This marked the height of the late 2010s culture wars, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.