Serpentine Sunset

Andrew Schoultz

Info: Los Angeles-based artist Andrew Schoultz (*1975, US) is known to international audiences for his repetitive canvas works in which he approaches social and political issues in a painterly way. With his densely layered paintings, Schoultz represents an all-encompassing, historical position in which he explores recurring patterns of behaviour in history in relation to war, natural disasters and globalisation. Inspired by underground comics, German cartography, ancient illustrations from Schedel’s World Chronicle of 1493 or Persian miniatures, the American artist’s works are visually and thematically highly allegorical. They manifestly lack references to individual historical events, but explore a collective restlessness fed by various global affairs. His wide range of historical references illustrates not only Schoultz’s interests and influences, but also his idea of illustrating the cyclical nature of secular history through the use and juxtaposition of archaic and modern symbols, as well as iconography. In his second solo exhibition, Serpentine Sunset, at Galerie Droste, Andrew Schoultz presents new works on canvas that complement his cycle of works, but in their figurativeness herald a new phase of creativity.