Aurel Schmidt's home workspace, with work in progress

Eyes that sparkle from a distance but up close are made of flies or spiders, drawn with such delicate detail as to make them lovely…and a little gross at the same time. Modern masterpieces by de Kooning, Pollack, and Picasso reimagined from a punk, female perspective, complete with empty beer cans, cigarette butts, and “paint” made of urine.
     This is the work of Aurel Schmidt, perhaps best exemplified by So Damn Pure, the central piece of her Deitch Projects Maneater show. When Morris Louis poured rivers of paint on canvases in the 1950s, critics referred to it as the purest form of painting. Schmidt turns this purity inside out, covering the canvas instead with “impure” fluids. “I just wanted to get all these things from my life … pee, cum, period blood, Pepto Bismol … all these impure fluids, and make the anti-pure painting,” she explains.
     After this purge, Schmidt may be ready to move on to new sources of inspiration. Self-taught, the Canadian-born, New York-based artist has worked her way through the masters, scored her first big solo show at age 25, and is now ready to enter into the next phase of her career. The Deitch Projects show, held in October 2008, was a turning point for the artist in almost every way possible.