F irst Telepathic Email dates to Dana Schutz’s early artistic career. Executed in 2006, the painting was featured in a group exhibition held in the same year titled “Once Upon a Time in the West” at Contemporary Fine Arts in Berlin, alongside works by contemporary darlings including Cecily Brown, Christopher Wool, and Georg Baselitz. The painting captures a group of curious onlookers gather before a machine connected to a man’s head by digital cables. Oblivious to the figure laying before them, the crowd’s ghoulish faces stare blankly at the apparatus. The content shown on the screen remains a mystery to viewers peering from the other side, while the work’s title provides limited hint. “I never want the viewer to have to know the whole story to 'get' the painting,” Schutz elaborates on her enigmatic narratives. “Often I will invent hypothetical situations that can act as surrogate situations for conditions that I am thinking about and that I always feel are logical." Characteristic of Schutz’s modus operandi, her choice of chromatic vibrancy further compresses the tightly arranged composition, rendering the puppet-like man and machine at the foreground uncannily large and distorted. Schutz’s unique combination of expressive abstraction and figuration is applauded to have “vivified present conditions of life on a faltering planet as dramatically as an artist can while staying devoted to aesthetic ideals.” (Peter Schjeldahl, ‘Dana Schutz’s Paintings Wring Beauty from Worldwide Calamity’, The New Yorker, 28 January 2019)

The New York-based artist has had several solo shows at prominent institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, Miami Art Museum, Miami, and Neuberger Museum of Art, New York. Her works are part of museum collections such as the Guggenheim, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York Museum of Modern Art, as well as the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Last October, Schutz was announced to have joined David Zwirner’s list of represented artists. She also recently held her first London solo show in Thomas Dane Gallery.

《第一封心靈感應電子郵件》繪於2006年，是戴娜・舒茨事業生涯初期的作品。同年，此畫在柏林當代藝術畫廊群展「Once Upon a Time in the West」上展出，當中有多位當代名家的傑作，如塞西麗・布朗、克里斯托弗・塢爾和格奧爾格・巴塞利茲等。在本作中，一群好奇的看客圍在一部電子儀器前凝神呆望，儀器背面的電線連著一名男子的頭部。這群看客對面前的男子毫不在意，只顧盯著儀器的屏幕，他們的眼神空洞、神態漠然，令人不寒而栗。然而，這部儀器後方的觀眾無從得知屏幕上的內容，作品標題所透露的訊息亦十分有限。舒茨曾就這種神秘的敘事方式作出以下解釋：「我從來都不想讓觀眾掌握所有來龍去脈來『了解』作品。通常，我會建構一些我認為合乎常理的虛擬場景，演繹心中所想。」畫中繽紛活潑的色彩，突出了緊密的畫面構圖，使畫面前方死氣沉沉、無法動彈的男子和電子儀器顯得異常巨大，形態失真。這種糅合抽象與具象表現風格的獨特繪畫手法，是舒茨的典型創作特色，曾獲褒為 「以充滿活力的繪畫手法和出神入化的戲劇風格，將這顆搖搖欲墜的星球之生命百態盡現紙上，同時致力追求審美理想」（彼得・史耶道爾撰，〈戴娜・舒茨的畫：在普世的困厄中發現美〉，《紐約客》，2019年1月28日）。

戴娜・舒茨長駐紐約，曾在多間著名國際藝術機構舉辦個展，包括克里夫蘭當代藝術博物館、邁阿密藝術博物館及紐約紐伯格藝術博物館。她的作品獲多間知名博物館收藏，包括古根海姆美術館、惠特尼美國藝術博物館、紐約現代藝術博物館及洛杉磯漢默美術館。上年十月，大衛・茲納畫廊宣布將代理舒茨的作品。最近，托馬斯・戴恩畫廊為她舉辦了首場在倫敦的個展。