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The American painter smothers her paintings in thick gobs of gooey paint. This first proper London exhibition is a messy, exuberant tribute of her medium, but some big messages are smuggled through if you manage to uncover them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as a leading figurative artists of her generation – is focused on surface, brush strokes, hue and substance. This is art for artists, real high-level aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy losing yourself in coats of color and shading, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, symbolic visuals that truly drives the artworks resonate.

Works in the First Gallery

The works in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and roaring mobs. In one depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event off canvas, brandishing fists and creating a path of debris in their wake. A different work presents a person given a huge mask in some bizarre ceremony before 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 furious, and crowd psychology is transforming all to waste.

An Embrace by the artist.

Changing Themes

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to shift her focus to the leaders and elites, rather than the masses that support them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with grapes and steak in a gloomy eating space; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in gilded seats – whereas in other works a couple comfort one another in a landscape strewn with corpses, and a woman, perhaps the artist, rests naked, desolate and helpless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is ultradense, thickly layered stuff, filled with allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of a symbolist master, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the big-headed weirdness of Paul McCarthy. There are riffs on the history of painting, numerous references to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that a particular work is a depiction of a cartoon character from SpongeBob SquarePants). It would take time identifying all the elements from classic painters with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to analysis. It seems like I’m being quizzed on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are two relatively clear themes: the people in power, and the public that they bait.

Controversy and Impact

And the artist understands about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her artwork a titled piece – a semi-abstracted depiction of the body of a historical figure, a black teenager who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955 – caused untold controversy when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. An activist picketed the work daily, and some called for it to be removed. A white artist depicting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of African-American suffering was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a time that saw people turning on each other even if they were on the identical team. In retrospect, in a society increasingly polarized, less nuanced and angrier than ever, it feels almost quaint that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful artwork.

Legacy and Current Work

This might have ended her career, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But all her subsequent work now exists in its shadow. She unavoidably came out of that ordeal a transformed creator. But what hasn’t changed is how good she is, how she still engages in brilliant, sickly, gloopy and deeply political art at the highest level.