Normally artists that primarily do drawings as their main art practice seem to fly under the art world radar. Not so with Aurel Schmidt. She is only 27 yrs old (about) and has already had solo shows at Deitch Projects in NYC and Peres Projects in LA. She draws tiny abject objects like flies, maggots, rats, used contraceptives, and cigarette butts, and patterns them into grinning faces, "zombie" forms, witty phrases, and gobs of hair that look like they've been pulled out of a bathroom drain. She is a master draftswoman and has the patience and work ethic to construct highly complex writhing forms. Her content seems to reflect a bleak world view that everything is not only dying, but rotting on the inside. Schmidt is from Vancouver and grew up with organic eating hippy parents. I can picture her standing in front of the families compost pile getting ideas. Now that she has moved to New York, she seems to be channeling the detritus of a burnout hipster lifestyle through the lens of high modern art in De Kooning and Louis Morris. As her drawings look more towards art history I would hope they don't get sucked too far in. I am sure that if anyone were to appreciate the fox eating his own intestines from the recent film Antichrist (which I have not seen), it would be Aurel Schmidt.
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