Tag: Pieter Schoolwerth

Pieter Schoolwerth at Petzel Gallery

Pieter Schoolwerth’s new paintings at Petzel Gallery question human identity in a time when our on-screen personas are more prevalent than ever.  Basing his images on screenshots of the life-simulation game The Sims 4, each digital avatar’s form is mingled with flat layers of grey surface and some have faces rendered in expressionist swirls of paint.  Here, young women take a selfie while a horrified woman in a space suit (full protective gear?) looks on.  The disorienting effect of paint vs inkjet print, vivid color vs drab grey and layers that have come unmoored from their source create a fascinating world of provisional realities.  (On view in Chelsea through Oct 31st. Masks and social distancing are required and gallery capacity is limited.  Visitors must give contact info.)

Pieter Schoolwerth, Shifted Sims #1 (Get Together) oil, acrylic, inkjet on canvas, 54 x 93 inches, 2020.

Pieter Schoolwerth at Miguel Abreu Gallery

How do you make representational painting in the digital age, when bodies no longer have to be near each other to interact? Pieter Schoolwerth ponders this in a multi-step process that involves photographing figures and shadows, drawing them, altering them in the computer, creating them in foam core or wood and printing and painting on canvas. The resulting images are convincingly attractive but unsatisfying – in this enigmatic relief sculpture depicting a student center, various figures are together but don’t connect. (At Miguel Abreu Gallery on the Lower East Side through June 28th).

Pieter Schoolwerth, Model for “Student Center,” enamel on wood, 54 3/8 x 47 ¼ x 7 ½ inches, 2017.

 

Pieter Schoolwerth at Miguel Abreu Gallery

One day while cleaning, artist Pieter Schoolwerth exclaimed in frustration, ‘This vacuum sucks!’ This unintended truism launched the idea for a show – can a vacuum do anything other than suck? Schoolwerth’s paintings and installation at Miguel Abreu Gallery show humans sucked into another dimension, speaking from the void and holding a vacuum hose like a mic. (Through May 3rd).

Pieter Schoolwerth, installation view of ‘Your Vacuum Blows, which Sucks,’ at Miguel Abreu Gallery, March 2015.

Pieter Schoolwerth at Miguel Abreu Gallery

Pieter Schoolwerth, After Troy 6, oil acrylic, giclee print and oil pastel on canvas, 2012.
Pieter Schoolwerth, After Troy 6, oil acrylic, giclee print and oil pastel on canvas, 2012.

Painter Pieter Schoolwerth rewrites art history with a new series of paintings that remake 17th century French painter Simon Vouet’s 1635 ‘Aeneas and His Family Fleeing Troy.’  Here, Aeneas, his invalid father and his small son crowd into one dynamic figure (created from digital printout, drawn lines and thick areas of painting) in an urgent escape.  (At Miguel Abreu Gallery, Lower East Side, through Dec 22nd).