Skip to content
Dana Schutz, Imagine Me and You

Dana Schutz

Imagine Me and You

Installation view

2019

Dana Schutz, Imagine Me and You

Dana Schutz

Imagine Me and You

Installation view

2019

Dana Schutz, Imagine Me and You

Dana Schutz

Imagine Me and You

Installation view

2019

Dana Schutz, Imagine Me and You

Dana Schutz

Imagine Me and You

Installation view

2019

Dana Schutz, Imagine Me and You

Dana Schutz

Imagine Me and You

Installation view

2019

Dana Schutz, Imagine Me and You

Dana Schutz

Imagine Me and You

Installation view

2019

Dana Schutz, Imagine Me and You

Dana Schutz

Imagine Me and You

Installation view

2019

Dana Schutz, Imagine Me and You

Dana Schutz

Imagine Me and You

Installation view

2019

Dana Schutz, Imagine Me and You

Dana Schutz

Imagine Me and You

Installation view

2019

Dana Schutz, Imagine Me and You

Dana Schutz

Imagine Me and You

Installation view

2019

Dana Schutz, Imagine Me and You

Dana Schutz

Imagine Me and You

Installation view

2019

Dana Schutz, Imagine Me and You

Dana Schutz

Imagine Me and You

Installation view

2019

Dana Schutz, Imagine Me and You

Dana Schutz

Imagine Me and You

Installation view

2019

Dana Schutz, Imagine Me and You

Dana Schutz

Imagine Me and You

Installation view

2019

Dana Schutz, Imagine Me and You

Dana Schutz

Imagine Me and You

Installation view

2019

Dana Schutz, Imagine Me and You

Dana Schutz

Imagine Me and You

Installation view

2019

Dana Schutz, Imagine Me and You

Dana Schutz

Imagine Me and You

Installation view

2019

Dana Schutz, Imagine Me and You

Dana Schutz

Imagine Me and You

Installation view

2019

Dana Schutz, Imagine Me and You

Dana Schutz

Imagine Me and You

Installation view

2019

Dana Schutz, Imagine Me and You

Dana Schutz

Imagine Me and You

Installation view

2019

Dana Schutz, Imagine Me and You

Dana Schutz

Imagine Me and You

Installation view

2019

Dana Schutz, Painting in an Earthquake

Dana Schutz

Painting in an Earthquake

2019

Oil on canvas

94 x 87.75 inches

Dana Schutz, Sun Lady

Dana Schutz

Sun Lady

2018

Bronze

40 x 22 x 18 inches

Dana Schutz, Smoker

Dana Schutz

Smoker

2018

Bronze

28 x 30 x 12 inches

Dana Schutz, Washing Monsters

Dana Schutz

Washing Monsters

2018

Bronze

44 x 38 x 17 inches

Dana Schutz, Buddy

Dana Schutz

Buddy

2018

Bronze

30 x 20 x 16 inches

Dana Schutz, Head in the Wind

Dana Schutz

Head in the Wind

2018

Bronze

22 x 14 x 22 inches

Dana Schutz, Touched

Dana Schutz

Touched

2018

Oil on canvas

30.5 x 26 inches

Dana Schutz, Washing Monsters

Dana Schutz

Washing Monsters

2018

Oil on canvas

94 x 87.75 inches

Dana Schutz, Trouble and Appearance

Dana Schutz

Trouble and Appearance

2019

Oil on canvas

90 x 96 inches

Dana Schutz, The Visible World

Dana Schutz

The Visible World

2018

Oil on canvas

108 x 140 inches

Dana Schutz, The Wanderer

Dana Schutz

The Wanderer

2018

Oil on canvas

90 x 72 inches

Dana Schutz, Mountain Group

Dana Schutz

Mountain Group

2018

Oil on canvas

120 x 156 inches

Dana Schutz, Beat Out the Sun

Dana Schutz

Beat Out the Sun

2018

Oil on canvas

94 x 87.5 inches

Dana Schutz, Boatman

Dana Schutz

Boatman

2018

Oil on canvas

88 x 75 inches

Dana Schutz, Presenter

Dana Schutz

Presenter

2018

Oil on canvas

88 x 88 inche

Dana Schutz, Strangers

Dana Schutz

Strangers

2018

Oil on canvas

88 x 84 inches

Dana Schutz, Treadmill

Dana Schutz

Treadmill

2018

Oil on canvas

90 x 96 inches

Press Release

Petzel Gallery is delighted to announce, Imagine Me and You, a solo exhibition of new paintings and sculptures by Dana Schutz. This is her third show at the gallery and will mark the first time she will exhibit sculptures. The exhibition will be on view from January 10th through February 23rd with an opening reception on Thursday, January 10th, from 6–8pm.

Imagine Me and You depicts strange terrain where clouds hover like rocks, ground is composed of jawbones, and mountains suspend writhing histories and political dilemma. Here, characters travel in groups or pairs, their features pocked and marred by exterior forces or molded by interior psychic malady. Alone and often monstrous, they struggle to inhabit their own image. Their figuration is informed by their task at hand and own felt sensation—a fishlike runner tries to escape her body on an endless treadmill, a lecturer giving a Ted Talk feels her face as she shapes it, and a multi-limbed painter tries to hold up her studio and canvas while the walls tumble in an earthquake.

The surfaces of Schutz’s new paintings are layered and built up with thick impasto. Figures become walking palettes as paint, daubed and squeezed straight from the tube, create scars, wounds, nipples or noses.  Other times, the paint is sculpted, as in the painting Bat, molding it as an imprint of an iconoclast’s weapon that has swiped across the character’s face.

As paint is used as a sculptural material to build subjects, five new bronze sculptures render Schutz’s pictorial elements as objects. The sculptures, first molded in clay and later cast in bronze, are gestural and direct. There is a physicality of feeling combined with absurdity that is comically tragic—an anguished man sports an extra head, a smoker exhales a sculptural cloud, and a woman mashes her breasts together under a setting sun. One sculpture, Washing Monsters, echoes the painting of the same title—a man stranded on a mountain top caresses and cares for a presence that he fears. The weight of the monster’s arm hugs him in companionship yet confines him for eternity.

Dana Schutz was born in 1976 in Livonia, Michigan. She has been the subject of museum exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Schutz’s solo exhibitions include Eating Atom Bombs at the Transformer Station, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland (2018); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2017); Musée d’art contemporain de Montéal (2015); Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover (2014); Hepworth Wakefield Museum, Wakefield, United Kingdom (2013); Miami Art Museum; Denver Art Museum (2012); Neuberger Museum in Purchase, New York (2011); Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemoranea di Trento e Roverto, Italy (2010); and the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts (2006). She has participated in many acclaimed group exhibitions, including The Whitney Biennial 2017, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017); Riotous Baroque: From Cattelan to Zurbarán Manifestations of Precarious Vitality, Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland (2012); Take Two. Worlds and Views: Contemporary Art from the Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2007); and Clandestine, Venice Biennale, Venice (2003).

Petzel Gallery is located at 456 West 18th Street New York, NY 10011. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 AM–6:00 PM. For press inquires, please contact Ricky Lee at ricky@petzel.com, or call (212) 680-9467.