When the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan interviewed Dana Schutz for the October 2005 issue of Flash Art, he asked the question, “Who do you measure yourself against?” Schutz replied, “Picasso, you can always try, right?” One can see this influence in her latest exhibition of new paintings at the Zach Feuer Gallery. Guitar Girl (2009) features both a guitar (common to the Cubist's visual lexicon) and a motif of black holes, one depicted as a pupil, that can also trace back to Picasso, as seen in his late paintings, currently on view this month as well, at the Gagosian Gallery. Schutz’s lumpy figures and overextended body parts (like the guy’s head in Blind Foot Massage) dissolve into flat backgrounds, again nodding to the Spanish master.

However, Schutz’s evolving pictorial style is by no means a sheer emulation of Picasso or other great masters from the past, but rather a continued investigation of painterly surface and space. The power of Schutz as a painter is her impressive way of referencing the past while metaphorically capturing modern anxieties apposite to our times.

What is delightful about Schutz’s new paintings is the colorful palette, something not seen as vivid in her past work. Still present are a rotating cast of characters invented by the artist, placed in situations half real and half surreal. Her varied, expressive brushwork and color give lyricism and fluidity to the work. While peeking into Schutz’s bizarre world, your eyes tend to dance around the canvas, but always remain engaged in what you are looking at. As a whole, the new paintings are very tactile, with either the characters involved directly in the act of touching, or in a broader sense, with the artist capturing not what something looks like but how it feels.

Images: Blind Foot Massage (2009); Guitar Girl (2009). Courtesy Zach Feuer Gallery.