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The American painter smothers her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. Her first proper London show is a messy, exuberant celebration of her material, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

Schutz's Approach

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her generation – is all about surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks losing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are populated by giant-headed cyclopses and roaring mobs. One piece shows a group of figures trudges mindlessly towards something outside the frame, waving hands and leaving a trail of debris in their wake. A different work presents a figure receiving a huge mask in an odd ceremony in front of a crowd of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as social commentary, 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 second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the masses that support them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – while in additional pieces a pair comfort one another in a scene filled with dead bodies, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests unclothed, forlorn and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with references. There’s the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic invites to analysis. I feel as if one is tested on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are a couple of distinct themes: the ruling class, and the public that they provoke.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about that. In 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in a southern state in 1955 – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of exploiting black death for her personal benefit. An activist picketed the work each day, and others demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. In retrospect, in a world increasingly polarized, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her career, and the artist likely aims to progress. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that experience a transformed creator. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political painting at the highest level.