Model as Painting

One of the clear characteristics of our digital age is that all things, even bodies, are suspended from their material substance.. We as living beings are now confronting a structural split between the substance of things and their virtual double. Pieter Schoolwerth attempts to reverse this techno-cultural trend with his series of “in the last instance” paintings, in which the stuff of paint itself reappears only at the end of a complex, multimedia effort to produce a figurative picture.

Model as Painting is the first in-depth publication on Schoolwerth’s practice. Conceived by Schoolwerth as a comprehensive overview of his work leading up to the “Model as Painting” series, and an analysis of the particular processes developed in this body of work, the volume was designed in collaboration with Tiffany Malakooti and offers richly illustrated ideas, critical essays, and documentation. An introductory text by the artist lays out the foundations of his painting processes, and the main essays by art historian Molly Warnock and critic Peter Rostovsky respectively situate Schoolwerth’s art produced over the last fifteen years, and set out to define his “practice [as] singular in its focus on language, labor, and the body’s dispersal in today’s technological landscape.”