• Dana Schutz

     Shadow of a Cloud Moving Slowly

     

    Thomas Dane Gallery

    16 September - 19 December 2020
  • Shadow of a Cloud Moving Slowly

    Neanderthal, 2020

    Shadow of a Cloud Moving Slowly

    For Shadow of a Cloud Moving Slowly (2020), Dana Schutz, in her inaugural solo exhibition in London and first at Thomas Dane Gallery, presents a selection of new paintings and bronze sculptures continuing her visualization of fictional conditions, psychological sensation and subjective experience. 

  • Lumberjacks, 2020 oil on canvas 274.3 x 355.6 cm. 108 x 140 in.

    Lumberjacks, 2020

    oil on canvas
    274.3 x 355.6 cm.
    108 x 140 in.
  • Shadow of a Cloud Moving Slowly confirms Schutz's interest in painting as a physical and affective space where imagined crises...

                       Large Model, 2020

                       oil on canvas
                       228.6 x 182.9 cm.
                       90 x 72 in.

    Shadow of a Cloud Moving Slowly confirms Schutz's interest in painting as a physical and affective space where imagined crises and social relations are held in tension. The paintings depict a beleaguered and bruised cast of characters that grope in the dark, stuggle together in isolation, and wander alone in colour fields. Clouds fall like rocks from above, and a smoky sky, ablaze in green, serves as a vivid backdrop for a vacant-eyed protagonist, while costumed birds shove him from his mountaintop perch. Boaters drift in the darkness as if forever - unmoored, rudderless and disinterested. Their heads, like fruit in a bowl, resemble a still life. Mood, interiority and psychic discord are echoed in setting and landscape: a nomad in the desert is hampered by an eyeball and chain, which locks eyes with the sun, while the monstrous size of Large Model (2020) suggests the figure could stride through the sea at any depth. 

  • Atlas, 2019 bronze 63.5 x 86.36 x 42.2 cm. 25 x 34 x 16 5/8 in. edition 1 of 3 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Atlas, 2019 bronze 63.5 x 86.36 x 42.2 cm. 25 x 34 x 16 5/8 in. edition 1 of 3 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Atlas, 2019 bronze 63.5 x 86.36 x 42.2 cm. 25 x 34 x 16 5/8 in. edition 1 of 3 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Atlas, 2019 bronze 63.5 x 86.36 x 42.2 cm. 25 x 34 x 16 5/8 in. edition 1 of 3 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Atlas, 2019 bronze 63.5 x 86.36 x 42.2 cm. 25 x 34 x 16 5/8 in. edition 1 of 3 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).

    Atlas, 2019

  • Boat Group, 2020 oil on canvas 236.2 x 304.8 cm. 93 x 120 in.
    Boat Group, 2020
    oil on canvas
    236.2 x 304.8 cm.
    93 x 120 in.
  • (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
  • As if to reinforce the physical nature of her subjects, Schutz's use of paint is layered and thickly applied onto... As if to reinforce the physical nature of her subjects, Schutz's use of paint is layered and thickly applied onto... As if to reinforce the physical nature of her subjects, Schutz's use of paint is layered and thickly applied onto...

    As if to reinforce the physical nature of her subjects, Schutz's use of paint is layered and thickly applied onto the canvas in a sculptural fashion. On view at No.11 Duke Street, a selection of six new bronze sculptures formalize Schutz's pictorial features as objects. Originally formed in clay, the sculptures are intensely gestural, pockmarked and finger-punched. Here, the sculptures hold a tangible sense of temporality, whether violent, tragicomic or ominous. The Juggler's (2019) balls melt and reform around her in a comic and exhaustive excercise, while in Heft (2019) a subject shoulders the heavy load of another. Across both mediums in Shadow of a Cloud Moving Slowly, Schutz isolates figures in settings that contend with danger and affliction, internal dilemmas and clownish absurdity; their physical contortion and conflict caught in a dislocated transience. 

  • Bound, 2019 oil on canvas 223.5 x 223.5 cm. 88 x 88 in.

    Bound, 2019

    oil on canvas
    223.5 x 223.5 cm.
    88 x 88 in.
  • Lion , 2019 bronze 55.9 x 48.3 x 21.6 cm. 22 x 19 x 8 1/2 in. edition 1 of 3 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Lion , 2019 bronze 55.9 x 48.3 x 21.6 cm. 22 x 19 x 8 1/2 in. edition 1 of 3 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Lion , 2019 bronze 55.9 x 48.3 x 21.6 cm. 22 x 19 x 8 1/2 in. edition 1 of 3 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Lion , 2019 bronze 55.9 x 48.3 x 21.6 cm. 22 x 19 x 8 1/2 in. edition 1 of 3 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Lion , 2019 bronze 55.9 x 48.3 x 21.6 cm. 22 x 19 x 8 1/2 in. edition 1 of 3 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Lion , 2019 bronze 55.9 x 48.3 x 21.6 cm. 22 x 19 x 8 1/2 in. edition 1 of 3 (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).

    Lion , 2019

  • The Victor, 2020 oil on canvas 198.1 x 182.9 cm. 78 x 72 in.

                                                                   The Victor, 2020

                                                                   oil on canvas
                                                                   198.1 x 182.9 cm.
                                                                   78 x 72 in.
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  • Dana Schutz (b.1976, Livonia, Michigan) lives and works in New York. She graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art with...

    Photo: Jason Schmidt

    Dana Schutz (b.1976, Livonia, Michigan) lives and works in New York. She graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art with her BFA in 2000. She went on to attend Columbia University, where she finished her MFA in 2002. In this same year, Schutz produced her inaugural show Frank From Observation, an exhibition based on the conceit of Schutz as the last painter representing the last subject: ‘Frank’. Schutz also participated at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture residency in Skowhegan, ME, and the Norwich School of Art and Design in the United Kingdom. 

     

    Testing painting as an affective space, Schutz’s work often includes subjects—either singular, coupled, or grouped—in creative, social or violent activities. Composed in a discrete manner, her paintings loosely allude to instances of heightened interiority, subjective experience or imaginative systems or situations. Their delivery is often comprised through modes of maximalist decadence and destruction; their friction emotive: shame, embarrassment, masochistic wit, anxiety or precarity are frequent emotive registers. This fragility often manifests from extreme contexts, which thematic series have reinforced. For instance, Schutz’s The Self-Eaters (2003) series shows subjects in acts of auto-cannibalism: form takes on formlessness in each subject’s malleability to both destroy and regenerate.

     

    Larger works have incorporated tangled subjects in dynamic, wonky narratives which contort figure-ground relationships. Space is substituted by time, allowing for moments to collide and collapse. More recent paintings have focused on specific characters, their intersubjectivity and deep introspection. These have been reinforced by new bronze sculptures, rendering her pictorial elements, specifically their chaos, extant as objects.

  • Recent solo exhibitions include: Imagine Me and You, Petzel, New York NY (2019); Dana Schutz: Eating Atom Bombs, Transformer Station,...

    Photo: Jason Schmidt

    Recent solo exhibitions include: Imagine Me and You, Petzel, New York NY (2019); Dana Schutz: Eating Atom Bombs, Transformer Station, Cleveland OH (2017); Dana Schutz, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Boston MA (2017); Waiting for the Barbarians, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Germany (2016); Fight in an Elevator, Petzel, New York NY (2015); Dana Schutz, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montréal, Canada (2015); Dana Schutz, Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover, Germany (2014); Dana Schutz, Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, England (2014); God Paintings, Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin, Germany (2013); Dana Schutz: If the Face Had Wheels, Denver Art Museum, Denver CO (2012); Dana Schutz: Works on Paper, Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver CO (2012); Piano in the Rain, Petzel, New York NY (2012); Dana Schutz: If the Face Had Wheels, Miami Art Museum, Miami FL (2012).

     

    Selected public collections include: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York NY; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles CA; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston MA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York NY; Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Rovereto, Italy; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco CA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY. 

     

    Selected public collections include: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York NY; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles CA; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston MA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York NY; Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Rovereto, Italy; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston MA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco CA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York NY.

    More about the artist

  • For enquiries please contact Devon McCormack: devon@thomasdane.com

    List of works