NYC: Aurel Schmidt At Deitch Projects

October 03, 2008



Aurel Schmidt is gross and cool. Imagine if in Where's Waldo? all the people formed into a gigantic creepy smiley face and all the people were actually dead slugs and the contents of Chinatown street ashtrays. Or, as Deitch Projects, where her new show "Maneater" opens tomorrow evening puts it: "Ms. Schmidt builds Arcimboldo-esque accumulations from street trash, the darker elements in nature, and researched historical imagery. Drawn with an elegant and sensitive line, she slurries together her brew of beasts and spreads them over the page to form faces, bodies, landscapes, or abstract artworks. A Grecian bust is transformed into a terrible tangle of twisting snakes. A face forms out of discarded fast food and maggots. A crooked cigarette butt smile appears over wormy lips as a woman’s burned out eyeholes stare blankly forward." How do you write about art that is by its very nature unbeautiful? Or is that backwardsness where the beauty sits? Can you be "elegant and sensitive" and still putrid? Maybe this is like when people say that black metal is not far off from classical. Find out tomorrow, New Yorkers, at 76 Grand Street.

Posted: October 03, 2008
NYC: Aurel Schmidt At Deitch Projects