“I draw rotting corpses all day, I have never been happier.” Aurel Schmidt has overcome the contemporary art industry with her eccentric drawings of surrealist figures and decay. After 29 years of life, the Canada to New York transplant has made a name for her self in the contemporary art scene gaining appraisal as well as forming a solid fan base for her pieces that range in media from coloured pencil to beer, blood and semen as well as everything in between.
Schmidt’s intricate designs are ornamented in every detail of the work with a subtlety that delights the eye. From the extravagant feathers of a Peacock to the fragile bodily structure of a common moth, the artist’s work is embellished in a meticulous consideration for every detail, which can be clearly perceived on first inspection. Whilst decoration is a vital component of her work, elements of realism occupy a matching role of importance. Her drawings are detailed with minute illustrations of condoms, insects, and used cigarette butts amongst other found debris to form a whole.
Once a teenager sketching detailed angst ridden illustrations of often satanic and quaintly disturbing content her newer creations have taken a more adult yet more uninhibited approach to her conveying her subjects. Embarrassed at the time if her creations, little did she know the drawings she once hid under her bed at her mothers house would have such a well spread praise and create for her a prominence in the art circuit.
Next up for the artist, a zombie series that collaborates sculpture, drawing and appropriation photography, as well as a sculpture project entailing the killing of snakes, mice and insects to cast, resulting in zombie like sculptures. As Schmidt details they will appear like her “ drawings but made of wax, or ceramic or something.”
Filed under: ARTISTS, AUREL SCHMIDT, CULTURE, DRAWING, MIXED MEDIA, PHOTOGRAPHY, SCULPTURE, SURREAL, TEXTUAL
