Louisiana Revue featuring American artist, Dana Schutz, (b. 1976), published in conjunction with Louisiana's major Schutz exhibition, Between Us . Schutz is already a classic in contemporary painting, she is represented in the Louisiana collection, and with a span of just over two decades we are presented with scenes that show that Schutz has a special relationship with the grotesque; That which is driven by the imagination, which is strange and unnatural. Dana Schutz has distinguished herself with enormous narrative power, strong color and sense of the dramatic – a story painter for our own wild times.
Dana Schutz's depictions of almost biblical proportions give rise to reflections on human folly. Our own contributions and self-deception included. We stand on the edge, and people rush off, float in vessels or climb to the top of the world's mountain while pointing and gesticulating as if they had the basic idea of how to save the situation on land.
Towers of Babel, tsunamis, the blind leading the blind and the turning wheel of life are often references that are used when the civil or immediately political context fades into ambiguities. But make no mistake, Schutz is neither escapist nor ignorant of the real world—and she leaves us in the middle of it.
Dana Schutz fundamentally renews the motif itself to use oil, brushes and canvas. Schutz paints something that often starts in the head or has its roots in language, and she is nourished by this fundamental tension between words and images. Beauty plays no role in her art, which shows us that her fabulous technical prowess is something that is primarily at the service of ideas.
Schutz is not on social media, nor does she find her heroes in Google's ever-expanding sources. She finds them primarily in her countless elective relationships with the masters of history, ranging from the Middle Ages to the big guns of modernism. Philip Guston more than anyone else. They are with her when she puts her thoughts on the canvases, on the paper of the charcoal drawings and in recent years, when she builds the scenery into sculptures.
Schutz's mid-career exhibition in Louisiana, together with the Revue here, is living proof of how much the art of painting, despite its age, continues to have input into the world today.
Louisiana Publications: Dana Schutz
Dimensions: H: 25.5 x W: 21.2 x D: 0.8 cm
Pages: 96
Language Danish
Published by Louisiana, 2023