When does a canvas become a mood, a state of feeling? Painter Dana Schutz asks precisely this question in her second solo exhibition One Big Animal at Thomas Dane Gallery. The show will open during Frieze London 2025 and evokes a group moving in unison, behaving like a single organism—whether consciously or blindly.
Schutz’s paintings draw deeply from history painting yet push specific details of time and place into the background, foregrounding intense psychological states, sensations, and subjective experiences. Working wet-on-wet, the dramas on her canvases swing across a wide emotional spectrum—from humor and joy to anxiety and despair—capturing moments where the most horrific collides with the most beautiful.
The exhibition title, One Big Animal, evokes the sense of a group acting as one organism, working in unison or…
Aesthetics of Chaos and Political Theater
The exhibition title conjures the sensation of a collective living entity moving as a whole. This idea is embodied in the painting Walking Boat, where a vessel carrying Cyclops-like figures and others proceeds—some lighting torches, others planting lemons—advancing toward whatever it illuminates or destroys. In The Rally, a joyful, chaotic crowd resembling a many-headed monster marches toward a shared future, leaving behind collapsing buildings like trash and dominoes. Who the group is doesn’t matter; what matters is the celebratory spirit advancing amid honks and grins.
Schutz also reveals political and social theater themes in her works. In The Example, a suited salesman figure points to a man-doll tied to a tree in what could be a public shaming. This highlights the political and allegorical tendencies that frequently appear in Schutz’s practice.
Body, Material, and Transformation
Schutz is not limited to canvas; the exhibition also features three new bronze sculptures—Lesson on a Boat, Glory, and Bather. These translate the characters and gestural physicality of her paintings into three-dimensional forms that seem to emerge from dense primordial matter. Exploring the relationship between form and formlessness, the sculptures appear caught in the act of becoming.
Additionally, the artist presents four new drypoint etchings on copper plates, reworking scenarios from earlier paintings using both traditional and unconventional tools (sandpaper, rotary machines, tattoo machines).
One Big Animal offers visitors the contradictory and intense emotional world at the core of Dana Schutz’s oeuvre: a luxurious beauty that gleams in the shadow of destruction.
Exhibition Details
- Artist: Dana Schutz
- Exhibition Title: One Big Animal
- Venue: Thomas Dane Gallery, Duke Street, St. James’s, London (across two spaces)
- Dates: On view until 20 December 2025
- Important Note: The exhibition opens during Frieze London 2025.
