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The American painter cakes her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. This inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her material, but significant themes are subtly embedded if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as one of the most important figurative artists of her generation – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level art-nerd stuff. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s plenty to engage you for a long time. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

The works in the first gallery are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. One piece shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their path. In another presents a figure receiving a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before a crowd of ugly supporters. It’s easy to read any of this as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and mob mentality is turning everything to rubbish.

The Kiss by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the leaders and elites, instead of the masses that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green recline in golden chairs – while in other works a couple console each other in a landscape filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Inspirations and References

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of a symbolist master, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of a contemporary artist. She includes nods on the art historical tradition, numerous references to mainstream media (It seems certain that a particular work is a portrait of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. I feel as if I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Renaissance masterpiece but, in my view, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the a New York exhibition. She was accused of exploiting black death for her own gain. An activist demonstrated against the painting daily, and some called for it to be removed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the major headline of the event. 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 same side. Looking back now, in a society more divided, simplified and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this heartfelt, sorrowful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and the artist likely aims to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its influence. She unavoidably emerged of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.