DANA SCHUTZ - Fight in an Elevator

Petzel Gallery is pleased to announce Fight in an Elevator—a solo exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Dana Schutz. The show will be on view from September 10 – October 24 with an opening reception on Thursday, September 10th, from 6-8pm.

As Fight in an Elevator, the title of Dana Schutz’s second exhibition at Petzel Gallery suggests, Schutz’s figures are placed within compressed interiors where they are forced to struggle against the boundaries of their painted environments and up onto the physical edge of the canvas. Her characters find themselves helpless in the mouth of a lion, exchanging blows in a mirrored elevator, or somnambulating down a narrow staircase. These highly structured spaces, which are both intensely public and utterly private, point to how Schutz tackles the subject of interiority—rather than offering a voyeuristic view, her frontal facing subjects stare directly back at the viewer, seemingly with the desire to extend outside of themselves.

Schutz’s new works act as permeable containers with subjects often framed within a specific duration. Each composition extends and suspends time: elevator doors slide open just long enough to catch a grisly six-person fight, and elsewhere, body parts seem to melt then reconfigure in slow-motion. The gestures too bend time, informed by the momentum and weight of what they depict. Many figures, while engaged in myriad activities from breastfeeding to fist-fighting, seem to do so in service to the painting itself: one woman, ostensibly practicing S&M, bends backwards to nudge the edges of the canvas with her hand and foot. Schutz’s characters work a double agenda: while embroiled in their own semi-private interiors, they simultaneously participate in the making of the painting.