Dana Schutz’s monumental works command stages across three continents

Dana Schutz commands the gallery spaces of three continents with works that oscillate between the monumental and the intimate, each piece a meditation on form, vulnerability and the human figure in flux. The artist’s bronze sculpture Blind Boat, newly commissioned for Kistefos Museum in Jevnaker, Norway, rises nearly 23 feet tall within the landscape, its darkened surface catching light across contoured surfaces that suggest both organic growth and deliberate architectural gesture.

At Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, the exhibition Trouble and Appearance gathered Schutz’s substantial charcoal drawings alongside paintings executed in rich, densely layered colour. These large format charcoal works on paper reveal the artist’s commitment to gestural mark making, where figure and abstraction merge. Preparatory sketches and monotypes accompany paintings in tones of deep crimson and ochre, creating a visual conversation between intention and execution.

At the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra, the work Sea Group from 2022 presents five inward facing figures whose bodies press against one another in a composition that evokes both intimacy and precarity. The figures cling as though bracing against an unseen force, their forms rendered with the same emotional weight that distinguishes Schutz’s approach across all media.

These three simultaneous presentations underscore an artist working across scale and material with equal conviction: monumental bronze in landscape, intimate charcoal on paper, and figurative painting where bodies become vehicles for psychological and formal complexity. Each venue offers its own frame for understanding how Schutz constructs meaning through the physical presence of the work itself.

Imagery courtesy of David Zwirner (@davidzwirner).