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The American painter cakes her canvases in thick gobs of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic celebration of her medium, but some big messages are subtly embedded if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – earning her acclaim as a leading figurative artists of her generation – is all about texture, application, hue and substance. This is art for artists, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. If you get your kicks immersing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to engage you for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that really makes the artworks resonate.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one depicts a collection of forms trudges mindlessly towards something off canvas, brandishing fists and leaving a trail of trash in their wake. In another presents a person receiving a large disguise in an odd initiation ritual before a horde of unattractive followers. It’s not hard to interpret these as political, as commentary on America’s condition, on how society is divided and angry, and crowd psychology is turning everything to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the second exhibition area, Schutz seems to redirect attention to the people in power, instead of the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms fill their faces with grapes and steak in a sombre dining room; a cardinal and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – while in other works a couple comfort one another in a scene strewn with corpses, and a female figure, perhaps the artist, rests naked, desolate 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 Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of an American painter, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the art historical tradition, countless nods to pop culture (It seems certain that one painting is a portrait of Handsome Squidward from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time spotting all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the artworks.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Meaning and Stories

Art this complex, complex and allegorical leaves itself open to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the meaning of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear narratives: the people in power, and the crowds that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And the artist understands about that. In 2017, her painting a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the corpse of a historical figure, a black teenager who was murdered by two white men in Mississippi 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 demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a scene of African-American suffering was the major headline of the biennial. It was the peak of the late 2010s social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a world increasingly polarized, simplified and angrier than ever, it seems almost charming that people had the time to get angry at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

It could have ruined her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to progress. But all her subsequent work since exists in its influence. She unavoidably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political painting at the top tier.