Aurel Schmidt – I Rot Before I Ripen

P·P·O·W is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Aurel Schmidt. “I Rot Before I Ripen” will feature new large-scale mixed media drawings as well as an installation. Schmidt uses gestures from landscape and the doodles of pre-pubescent girls as a vehicle to explore art historical tropes, infusing her works with girlish desire and erotic pleasure. Her complex, detailed drawings often depict hybrid or amalgamated forms that disorient the viewer and introduce absurdity, and oftentimes morbidity, into seemingly picturesque scenes. Images of butterflies, flowers, spider webs, snakes, skeletons, penises, and vulvas co-exist in a hyper erotic landscape of sex and death. Using her personal biography, Schmidt simultaneously examines heterosexuality from a playful, erotic, and adventuring female perspective and investigates how identity can be newly invented.

In addition to her large-scale drawings, the exhibition will include an installation with athletic tee shirts Schmidt has treated as canvases. Combining hand drawn sexual imagery, glitter, decals, and other collaged elements with the readymade contemporary iconography of the tee shirt, Schmidt turns these items from youthful masculine boy attire into female objects of desire. From iron-on photos of Justin Bieber to iconic magic mushrooms to the World Trade Center represented by two large penises, Schmidt provocatively challenges gender stereotypes and sexuality, through works that playfully weave grunge, punk, and skateboard culture with landscape, erotica, and glitter.

Aurel Schmidt was born in Kamploos, British Colombia and currently lives and works in New York City. Schmidt was included in Phaidon’s “Vitamin D2: New Perspectives in Drawing” (2013) and has exhibited nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions include Deitch Projects, New York, and Peres Projects, Los Angeles, as well as self organized pop-up exhibitions throughout New York City. Schmidt was included in the 2010 Whitney Biennial and has contributed to group exhibitions at Romeo, New York; Lomex, New York; Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York; Marianne Boesky, New York; Marlborough Contemporary, New York; Saatchi Gallery, London; Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna; DESTE Foundation for Contemporary Art, Greece; and Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, among others.

Gallery hours Tues-Sat 10 am – 6 pm

www.ppowgallery.com

Location:
P·P·O·W
535 West 22nd Street, 3rd Floor
10011 New York, NY
United States