Notes From Chelsea Part 1

A very dear friend and colleague loves Dana Schutz's paintings very much and I have tried desperatley to catch this enthusiasm for the work but to no avail. Saturday was the first time I had the experience of seeing the paintings in person at LFL Gallery in an exhibit entitled "Panic".

Walking into the first gallery I felt that sense of relief that comes from walking into contemporary art gallery to see paintings, actual paintings with moments of thick paint, moments of exposed underpainting, brush stroke marks thick and thin. Schutz's color choices are for the most part spot on, very well informed and satisfying, however, moments of muddiness are very distracting. Her, personal, odd spaces delineated by color and light start to become chunky and two thumbed much like the style the figures are handled in.

At this point the actions of these figures becomes clear and little bit of their magic dissapears. I was more interested in the idea of rendering those cannibalistic and macabre images with that luscious color. I then retreat into those smaller areas where her colors do sit next to each other with intese, vibrant energy and I try to forget the poorly drawn figures and muddy color. What I really want to look at are very small pieces of her paintings and I am not sure if this retreat is enough to redeem the paintings and then a little more of the magic dies.