Aurel Schmidt

Figure 1: SuperNatural_Aurel_Schmidt_detail_head-2011

Aurel Schmidt is a 38-year-old Canadian artist. Her art can be described as psychedelic or naturalistic. She also makes abstract pieces like in Burnouts (figure 2). Schmidt paints and sculpt, but primarily makes drawings which often represent naturalistic elements like animals, insects, and flowers in life-size, or organic matter like fur. She incorporates objects from everyday life like soda cans, cigarettes, condoms. All those elements are put together as the foundation of a bigger picture. As in SuperNatural (Figure 1), from her collection Body Swallows World (2006-2007), where fur, birds, snakes, larva, flies, and tree branches are arranged to form the bigger picture of a decaying corpse. However, the corpse is not realistic but even idealized. Hence, she uses naturalistic elements to form an abstract bigger piece.“She questions conventions of beauty by exploring associations with decomposition and rot” (Paddle8, n.d). Many of her works contain explicit sexual content.  Her work changes depending on the city she is staying in. As an example, she started incorporating city elements like rats, garbage and decays concept after she moved to New York. “Everyone is fighting for space. There’s like–no room for emptiness. There’s always noise or background noise ”(VICE, 2011). Hence, as to represent it she started filling her drawing with the “clutter of the city”(VICE, 2011).

The collection Burnouts give a good representation of Schmidt’s mental state during this period. Burnout is used in its literal and figurative meaning: “She refuses to sign with a gallery, a decision she made after discovering the pitfalls of having too much success, too fast”(Aleksander, 2011). She suffered from a lot of paranoia and anxiety after moving to New York and was doing a lot of drugs. A cocktail of negative emotion that Schmidt spill out in artwork like Oops to cope with her situation. She represented a burning smiling face as she attempted to seem happy when it wasn’t the case. She portrays greasy foods and soda spilled everywhere to represent her unhealthy lifestyle. We can also see an empty bag of cocaine. For all those reasons. Her themes generally revolve around death, decay, toxicity, self-destruction, and false pretense(VICE, 2011).

Figure 2: Aurel_schmidt_oops-original- drawing, color pencils

The project Voluntary submission (2011), is composed of 3 mixed media acrylic paintings. The piece Divorce (Figures 2 and 3) represents bright pastel flowers covered by a brown spray of paint and plastic flies. She represents marriage as a beautiful thing on the outside but slowly rotting from the inside.  The flies in the painting represent rot’s presence since flies are attracted to it. Similarly, the brown spray portrays fecal matter; representation of the putrification of marriage. Overall, Divorce criticizes society and couples trying hard to hide an already wasted marriage behind a false pretense of happiness to save appearances. 

Figure 3: Aurel_schmidt_divorce-Fabric, house paint, oven-baked-clay, human hair, nail polish, wire, pencil, vellum, glue, and canvas
 Figure 4: Aurel_Schmidt_divorce- detail

In conclusion, Aurel Schmidt is a multimedia artist who explores, based on her mental state and emotions, abstract concepts using representational drawings. Her artworks can be found on her official website AUREL SCHIDMT at http://www.aurelschmidt.com/.

Works Cited

Aleksander, I. (2011, February 23). Raw Energy, With a Girly Side. Retrieved from TheNewYorkTimes: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/fashion/24close.html

Artsy. (n.d). FUNK ART. Retrieved from Artsy: https://www.artsy.net/gene/funk-art

Asher Pen. (2007). Aurel Schmidt. Retrieved from Asher Pen: http://asherpenn.com/interview/aurel-schmidt/

McKay-Randozzi, I. (2006, May 9). Aurel Schmidt Interview. Retrieved from fecalface: http://www.fecalface.com/SF/features-mainmenu-102/147-aurel-schmidt-interview

Paddle8. (n.d). Aurel Schmidt. Retrieved from Paddle8: https://paddle8.com/work/aurel-schmidt/23832-Canadian/

Schmidt, A. (2019). Retrieved from http://www.aurelschmidt.com/

The NewYork Times. (2011, February 24). Raw Energy, With a Girly Side. Retrieved from The NewYork Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/fashion/24close.html

VICE. (2011, Septembre 1). Aurel Schmidt | Art Talk | VICE. Retrieved from Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK0_NNUrz1c

Wikipedia. (2019, November 22). Aurel Schmidt. Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurel_Schmidt

Wikipedia. (2019, October 2). Funk art. Retrieved from Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funk_art

Words: 500

3 thoughts on “Aurel Schmidt”

  1. This artist really puts herself into her work. The first image you used drew me into reading this blog. After I clicked on it and read further, her art changed in an unexpected way. I didn’t expect her work to go from a person made out of nature, to a burned napkin with a cocaine bag on it. This artist is truly channeling herself into her art and most likely uses it as a coping mechanism for dealing with everyday life. I really like your description and thoughts on each of her pieces. This blog is very clear and makes me understand the artist pretty well.
    -Olivia Halma

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  2. When I first saw this, I thought it was going to reference the beauty is death or rot, but I was surprised by the much more sinister undertones. And even though I’m not sure it is the point of her work, I admire the sustained attention to detail to make the ugly appear beautiful in a way. On a different note, all of these pieces shown seem to have a related theme and that is that life and society are harmful. It’s like everything that a living human is a part of is bad in some way. For instance, “Supernatural” is not nature and humanity living together in peace, it appears that the human had to die to let everything else live. In both “Burnouts” and “Divorce”, it seems apparent that societies expectations and appearances are perceived as more important than actual happiness and fulfillment. – Bethany S.

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  3. I am very intrigued by this idea of beauty and rot that you mention in regards to Aurel Schmidt’s work. It seems that she has the skill and talent to create pieces of great beauty but chooses to incorporate filth and decay like the flies on that one painting. While perhaps not as pretty, Schmidt’s pieces are much more powerful with this incorporation of death and decay especially since, like you said, it reveals her mental and emotional state when making the art. It is sad to hear about the cycle of her work causing her success which causes her to mentally struggle which gets put into her work and then propels the cycle. It is, however, cool to see the way that she uses art to cope with her turmoil.
    -Kelsie Mitchell

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