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The American painter cakes her canvases in heavy layers of gooey paint. Her inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but significant themes are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – earning her acclaim as a leading painters of her era – is focused on texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in layers of pigment and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are full of giant-headed cyclopses and baying crowds. In one shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their path. A different work presents a figure given a large disguise in some bizarre initiation ritual in front of a horde of unattractive followers. It’s easy to interpret these as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on societal splits and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, instead of the crowds that follow them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a green-clad man recline in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair console each other in a scene strewn with corpses, and a woman, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, forlorn and powerless in bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, covered in allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of a contemporary artist. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Painting this dense, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. I feel as if one is tested on the symbolism of a Renaissance masterpiece but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about that. Back in 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a young African-American who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was shown at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. A protester picketed the painting daily, and others called for it to be removed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of black pain was the major headline of the event. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

It could have ruined her professional life, and the artist likely aims to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is her exceptional skill, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.