Dana Schutz: If It Appears in the Desert

New York-based Dana Schutz is widely considered one of the most talented painters of her generation. As The New York Times' Holland Cotter wrote in 2007, “She's a terrific painter. From the start, her broad, sardonic, cartoon-expressionist style was prodigious but also focused. There was lots of splash, but the images were strong and centered. Her gallery shows were thematically tight without being programmatic, like a book of poems that reads as one poem. This kind of completeness is hard to achieve.” In this volume, Schutz takes on the still-life genre, coming up with dazzling, colorful paintings that are at once merry and ambiguous about the objects of our everyday lives. Thirteen recent paintings are presented, along with installation photographs from her recent exhibition at Contemporary Fine Arts, Kupfergraben. A conversation between the artist and Jörg Heiser lends additional insights into Schutz's pictorial compositions and working method.