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The American painter cakes her canvases in heavy layers of viscous pigment. This inaugural London exhibition is a splodgy, orgiastic tribute of her medium, but significant themes are smuggled through if you can scratch your way towards them.

The Artist's Technique

Her method – which has seen her lauded as one of the most important painters of her era – is focused on texture, application, colour and materiality. It’s painting for painters, truly advanced aesthetic geekery. Should you enjoy immersing yourself in coats of color and shadow, there’s enough here to keep you going for a while. But it’s her bizarre, surreal, cartoony, metaphorical imagery that truly drives the paintings tick.

Initial Exhibition Pieces

These pieces in the initial room are populated by enormous one-eyed beings and baying crowds. In one depicts a group of figures stomps senselessly toward an event outside the frame, waving hands and creating a path of trash in their path. In another presents a person receiving a huge mask in an odd initiation ritual before a horde of ugly supporters. It’s easy to interpret these as social commentary, as observation on the state of the US, on how society is divided and furious, and crowd psychology is transforming all to rubbish.

An Embrace by the artist.

Shift in Focus

In the other gallery space, the artist appears to redirect attention to the people in power, rather than the masses that follow them. Mysterious forms stuff their mouths with fruit and meat in a sombre dining room; a religious figure and a man in green sit back in golden chairs – whereas in additional pieces a couple console each other in a landscape filled with dead bodies, and a female figure, maybe Schutz herself, lies naked, desolate and powerless in a bed.

Influences and Allusions

This is extremely complex, multi-layered art, filled with allusions. You’ll find the ethereal dream-like signs of Odilon Redon, the pink, corporeal animation of Philip Guston, the carnival grotesqueries of James Ensor, the large-headed oddities of Paul McCarthy. She includes nods on the history of painting, countless nods to pop culture (I am almost 100% sure that one painting is a depiction of a cartoon character from an animated series). You could spend hours spotting all the bits of Cézanne and David with which she’s sprinkled the works.

The Example by the exhibitor.

Interpretation and Narratives

Art this complex, complex and allegorical invites to interpretation. It seems like one is tested on the symbolism of a Titian but, for my money, there are a couple of distinct narratives: the people in power, and the public that they provoke.

The 2017 Scandal

And Schutz should know about such dynamics. Back in 2017, her painting Open Casket – a partly abstract representation of the corpse of Emmett Till, a young African-American who was murdered by racist perpetrators in a southern state in the mid-20th century – sparked immense debate when it was displayed at the Whitney Biennial. Critics charged her of profiting from tragedy for her own gain. A protester demonstrated against the work daily, and some demanded it to be destroyed. A white artist painting – arguably with great sympathy – a image of black pain was the biggest story of the event. This marked the height of the recent social conflicts, a period that featured infighting even if they were on the same side. Looking back now, in a society more divided, less nuanced and more hostile than ever, it seems almost charming that individuals found moments to get upset at this emotional, mournful painting.

Aftermath and Recent Art

This might have ended her professional life, and Schutz probably wants to move on. But everything she’s done now exists in its influence. She inevitably emerged of that experience a changed artist. But what remains constant is how good she is, how she continues to practice in masterful, unsettling, gloopy and deeply political art at the top tier.