Thomas Schütte: Last Casts, New Etchings, Some Watercolours

Last Casts, New Etchings, Some Watercolours is the first exhibition in Frith Street Gallery’s new space. This is the first solo exhibition of Thomas Schütte's work in the UK since 2002.

Schütte is one of the most important figures in contemporary art and his practice encompasses a great variety of media. Often ignoring the specifics of any given discipline, his search for the most appropriate technique to create individual pieces often leads him to pursue unusual and unexpected strategies. Schütte’s sculptures, prints, drawings and installations often allude to his own earlier work whilst at the same time referencing objects from pop culture and art history.

The central works in this exhibition are five large-scale female figures cast in bronze, steel and aluminium. This series was started in 1998 and the selection shown here includes the last of the figures that the artist intends to create. The forms of some of the individual sculptures invoke notions of voluptuous ‘seated’ or ‘reclining’ nudes in a somewhat naturalistic style while others appear more abstracted. With their highly tactile surfaces and often contorted, truncated shapes they are both sensual and somehow awkward.

The exhibition also includes a selection of new watercolours, a suite of prints, which relate to the casts, the maquette for Schütte’s work Hotel for the Birds to be installed on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth later in the year and a print portfolio of designs for the artist’s series of architectural models.