The figures in Dana Schutz’s colorful paintings lack any emotional defense system to separate them from us. They appear to be made of clay or paste—something goopy without defined edges—and come apart in unseemly gobs, for example, when eating their own faces or hands. They have an endearing naïve quality that is equally balanced with being utterly repellent – like teddy bears with leprosy. Their disorderly, freaked-out emotional states beam out of the canvases in day-glo screams of color and brushstrokes like yelps. Schutz’s work belongs on a trajectory that passes through the German expressionism of James Ensor and intersects with the subject-destroying black humor of Bruce Nauman, but with a kind of nauseating sweetness all its own.

Born in Michigan in 1976, Schutz received her MFA from Columbia and her BFA at the Cleveland Institute of Art. She currently lives in New York, where she is a rising star in the contemporary resurgence of painting, with upcoming shows in Berlin and Boston. Schutz’s works will be featured in a major exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London, entitled The Triumph of Painting (Part II), from November 4, 2005 to February 5, 2006.