2012 Catalogue Archive

Dana Schutz uses unstable narrative dilemmas as a starting point to paint characters that act as either producers or performers, often overcoming dysfunctional situations. In Bra Removal, Schutz’s performer acts out a private moment of undress while confronting the viewer at the same time. Trying to remove the bra without indecent exposure becomes a struggle of the performer, something the artist accentuates with the squiggles painted throughout the composition. The dimensional white shirt contrasts with its flat tree like pattern, creating a visual screen from which to hide the performer’s privates. Schutz uses brushes, scrapers, squeegees, and oil crayons as painting tools that accentuate the characters depictions. The finished work stresses the simultaneity of thesubject matter and the painting’s material properties. Dana Schutz was born in 1976 in Livonia, Michigan. She has been the subject of museum exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Her traveling survey exhibition If the Face had Wheels opened at the Neuberger Museum, Purchase, New York in in September 2011 and traveled to the Miami Art Museum in January 2012. It will open at the Denver Art Museum in November 2012 in conjunction with a works on paper exhibition at the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art. Her solo museum shows have included Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin; Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto; The Rose Museum, Waltham; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland; and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park.