For EXPO Chicago 2022, Petzel presents a selection of works by Pieter Schoolwerth which give insight into the various series that the New York-based artist has been crafting over the course of his career, with focus on the years between 2006 until now. This capsule survey runs concurrent to “Rigged”, a solo exhibition of works by Schoolwerth currently on view at Petzel Gallery’s uptown location and Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin through May 7, 2022.

Schoolwerth’s 2021 survey exhibition at Kunstverein Hannover shows how his paintings over the years are layered compositions combining photographed, drawn, digitally processed, printed, and painted pictorial elements. In “Rigged”, his most current series, Schoolwerth’s practice continues to reflects the destabilized process of identity construction in an age characterized by increasingly abstract social relations entrenched in growing digital dependency.

Schoolwerth’s prolific bodies of work expand across several media including video, short films, sculpture, and painting. His practice is defined by projects that span years and contain several series of works, each dialoguing with each other with a fundamental emphasis on painting and representation of the human body in a consistently mutating world. From collaborations with fellow musicians, designing a record cover for Lucy Hunter & Aaron Dilloway’s album “Lucy & Aaron” and making artwork for a Cleveland record store to sculptural portrait homages to his late CalArts instructor Michael Asher, Schoolwerth creates an overarching lexicon with all series, each examining the renegotiation of physical reality.

Pieter Schoolwerth was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1970. He lives and works in New York. Since graduating from the California Institute of the Arts in 1994, he has exhibited internationally with notable solo shows at Thread Waxing Space, Greene Naftali, American Fine Arts Co. and Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York; Gallery SKE, New Delhi; What Pipeline, Detroit; and Capitain Petzel and Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin.

Schoolwerth's work belongs to several important institutional collections including: Aïshti Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon; Boros Collection, Berlin; Collection Philara, Düsseldorf; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Deutsche Bank Collection, New York, NY; Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig, Germany' Kistefos Museum and Sculpture Park, Jevnaker, Norway; MOCA, Los Angeles, CA; Orange County Museum of Art, CA; Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ; Pinault Collection, Paris; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; and Xiao Museum of Contemporary Art, Rizaho.

Schoolwerth’s work has been included in group exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Centre Pompidou, Paris, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Sadie Coles, London, and 303 Gallery, Gavin Brown’s enterprise, and Petzel, New York. Schoolwerth was most recently the subject of a solo exhibition at the Kunstverein Hannover in 2021, curated by Kathleen Rahn, and a group exhibition at the Museum Ratingen in 2022 as well as with the Boros Collection in Berlin. A new monograph is forthcoming.