Aurel Schmidt: Man Eater

With colored pencils and graphite, the rising, self-taught artist Aurel Schmidt, born in Kaloomps, Canada, in 1982, renders terrifying, Arcimboldo-esque babes with a highly charged, punk sensibility alongside forests of maggots, busts of tangled snakes, faces and figures made of spiders, cockroaches, cum and discarded hamburger. Man Eater, the first comprehensive volume devoted to Schmidt’s work, includes more than 60 drawings from the last five years, amplified by a generous selection of details that allow the reader to fully experience the painstaking precision of the artist’s hand. Featuring works from her recent solo exhibitions at Deitch Projects in New York and Peres Projects in Los Angeles, as well as drawings shown at the Deste Museum in Athens, Greece, this volume includes images from Schmidt’s Burnouts series of cigarette-burned faces and Party Monster series depicting New York City nightlife gone wild. Essay by curator Kathy Grayson.