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The American painter cakes her paintings in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Schutz’s approach – which has seen her lauded as a leading painters of her generation – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in layers of pigment and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a long time. But it’s Schutz’s grotesque, dreamlike, animated, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. One piece shows a collection of forms stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, brandishing fists 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 ugly supporters. It’s not hard to read any of this as social commentary, as commentary on the state of the US, on how society is divided and angry, and mob mentality is turning everything to waste.

The Kiss by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the masses that support them. Shadowy figures stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a gloomy eating space; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – whereas in other works a couple console each other in a scene filled with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, lies unclothed, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered stuff, filled with references. You’ll find the dreamy surreal symbolism of Odilon Redon, the fleshy pink cartoonishness of an American painter, the festive bizarre elements of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s littered the artworks.

A Model by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, intricate and symbolic leaves itself open to interpretation. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, in my view, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. In 2017, her artwork Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the body of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. She was accused of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester picketed the painting each day, and others demanded it to be removed. An artist of European descent depicting – perhaps compassionately – a scene of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the biennial. It was the peak of the recent social conflicts, a time that featured infighting even if they were on the identical team. Looking back now, in a world more divided, simplified and more hostile 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 progress. But everything she’s done since exists in its shadow. She inevitably emerged of that experience a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in masterful, unsettling, thick and highly topical painting at the highest level.