A Piece of Schmidt

By: Interview by Chase Whitman | October 18, 2010 | Art

The most interesting stories in the art world are the ones that come in sideways. They bring a new narrative to the table. They stir up the incestuous story with atypical elements that give us a fresh perspective where we can re-evaluate the things we like about the whole charade. Aurel Schmidt left her pastoral Canadian countryside for New York, a city known for its very direct manner of acceptance or dismissal. It was within this major business center that she began to carve out a space for herself and conjure forth her artwork.

To counter the sober daylight façade of the city, a river of never ending parties flows through the dark hours of the city. Nightclubs, dive bars, soirees and after-hours parties combine to create a continuous parade of intoxicating events. The people of New York all eventually make devotions and sacrifices to this party engine. Some get burned, but some discover a path within this current and create something much more noteworthy and lasting than a mysterious vomit-stained curb, a Page 6 Post mention or a suicide note. Aurel Schmidt’s work describes the phenomenon of these moments and some of its characters through highly detailed and wonderfully disturbing images.

The enjoyment one receives from looking at a Schmidt piece stems from the details. It is similar to examining a map composed of intricate imagery that conducts the viewer’s attention through canyons and coastlines until it reveals the entirety of the piece. The amount of detail she puts into these works is painstaking and overwhelming. The viewer’s eye loves being guided from facet to facet as it traverses the topography of her pieces. The reward for approaching one of these works from afar is extremely satisfying. She channels the complex visual patterns of the city and translates them into dynamic organic arrangements.

Like a witch doctor examining the spilled organs of a sacrificed chicken, she distills objects from the fallout of the party and tells us who was there. Schmidt uses fire, pigments and paper to conjure a sentiment of the emotional remains of cheap beer, cigarettes, drugs and blurry sex. She’s like a fortune-teller discerning the personalities of the previous night through the remnants of the revelry. This is not some expressionistic cultivation of chaos and impulse; these works reflect the merit of a determined hand, uncountable hours of work and a good pair of glasses. The two-dimensionality of the works on fragile paper help to echo the notion that these moments never last.

The monstrous visages are knitted together from organic and sometimes bucolic bits and pieces. A visual composting of tufts of hair and wood gnarls, smoke trails, spilled beer, lipless toothy grins, fingernails, avian faces, eyelashes and petunias comprise the characters of her works. Although the visual mass of the pieces is dense and complex, the subjects are often wonderfully wide-eyed and vacuous. The juxtaposition is like invoking a very involved alchemic process to concoct a beautifully superfluous result.

Take someone with an innate talent and give them enough cultural ammunition, they will elicit something that will cause you to gratefully reinvestigate the things you once enjoyed. Her casualness toward her success mixed with her conscious meditations toward her next steps is indicative of an appealing career. Her works are the perfect amount of charming naiveté and rigorous skill — a trial by fire, and now a time to successfully ponder the next step of what looks to be a very interesting and promising journey.

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