Tapestry

Transposing her complex, expressionistic painterly language to woven textile, Dana Schutz’s Tapestry traverses the border between tradition and innovation. Masterfully using colour to create form, the artist fractures bold medleys of dissonant tones into flat shapes to create a surreal, dream-like composition. The kaleidoscopic palette creates a decidedly retro, 1970s feel, underscored by the tapestry’s woollen texture. The vivid characterisation of the musician figure harmonises with the eerily fantastical elements of her surroundings: the keyboard keys have morphed into fingers, a face emerges from the music stand, the room dissolves into a forest in the background, and a mallet in the foreground shatters the floor into a mosaic. Celebrated internationally, Schutz most recently featured in the Whitechapel Gallery’s acclaimed group show Radical Figures (2020), affirming her role in a new generation of artists revitalising the expressive potential of figurative painting. Her works are held in major museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.