Night Work — David Schutter

David Schutter is an artist who lives and works in Berlin. His paintings and drawings constitute a phenomenological inquiry into specific works of art—their subjects and techniques, their history and iconography—observed, contemplated, and studied over a prolonged period of time in collections of public museums. Conceived as renditions of masterpieces as well as lesser-known works from the history of painting, Schutter’s paintings bring their subject to the point of concealment. “Night Work” features five paintings that take on the nocturnal “Studio Wall” still life by Adolph Menzel (1815-1905) from 1872. Schutter began to work on this group of paintings in parallel to his participation in documenta 14 in 2017. He first exhibited the paintings at Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago in October 2017 and finished them in Berlin in 2022.

David Schutter (b. 1974) is Professor in the Institut für Kunst at the Universität der Künste, Berlin and Visiting Professor in the Department of Visual Art at the University of Chicago. His drawings and paintings were included in documenta 14. He received the Berliner Kunstpreis from the Akademie der Künste, a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, and a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. His recent book of drawings, The Escape: From a Seventeenth Century Drawing Manual of the Face and its Expressions, was published by University of Chicago Press in 2021.

Verein by Association is a cultural nonprofit association in Zurich, initiated by Adam Szymczyk in 2022.