David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by American artist Dana Schutz (b. 1976) at its Paris location. In her work, Schutz constructs complex, allegorical visual narratives that engage the capacity of art to represent subjective experience. Often depicting figures in seemingly impossible, enigmatic, or invented situations, her works reveal the deeper complications, tensions, and ambiguities of contemporary life. This is Schutz’s second solo show with the gallery, and her first in Paris since her major survey presentation Dana Schutz: Le Monde Visible (The Visible World) was held at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris in 2023–2024.
The Sea and All Its Subjects reflects the artist’s ongoing interest in constructing improbable scenarios that function as evocative visual allegories. Taking the playfully taxonomic title of the show as a broad starting point, Schutz explores distinct scenes within a vast and enigmatic world while also engendering a proliferation of possible meanings.
Dense with color and mood, these wet-on-wet paintings are populated with figures that appear to float and drift within impossible, far-fetched scenarios and exist under difficult, absurd circumstances. Characterized by their rich narratives and formal inventiveness, Schutz’s new paintings attest to her continued examination of how subjective experience might be represented, as well as her ability to reveal the deeper ambiguities of the human condition.
Other works in the show feature single figures subjected to impossible situations or challenging conditions. In one canvas, a woman sits in a high-tech chair that has the ability to project images, as if it were an extension of the world inside the figure’s mind. The transparent projections depict images of nature—some symbolic, some painterly. The seated figure appears exultant yet somber; her almost religious presence is echoed in her gold necklace, which spells out Glory in looping cursive script.
