“I don’t know if art is for eternity, but I make art to dive deep into life. Because the lines of the unconscious that lead into the unknown take me to where the creative spirit frees itself.”

Lucia Schautz

Identity as a Process of Creation

In her multidisciplinary works, Berlin-based artist Lucia Schautz explores human identity as a physical and mental creative process. Schautz deciphers human sensitivities through a visual language that is fuelled by experiences, relationships, the highs and lows of existence. Through her physical presence, the artist lends her pictures intimacy, tenderness and a tense ambivalence of great psychological and emotional power.

Based on sources – art historical and everyday images with personal significance – Schautz focuses in her works on processes of perception that involve the viewer in a scenic interplay of lines and surfaces, figuration and abstraction, proximity and distance. She is particularly interested in the process of seeing, through which new connections are discovered and at the same time the merely recognisable is dissolved in order to reorganise existential connections. The space between the forms becomes the main motif, marginal elements come to the fore, forms suggest scriptural gestures that create the impression of a morphology of emergence and decay and keep people in constant motion.

The artist works in a multi-layered methodical process of reduction, repetition and re-creation, in which one work merges into the next: the snapshots of her performances become paintings on the wall, while the performances in turn arise from the intuitive physical act of painting. “The different layers in my art capture the fleeting expression of an interaction, a mental or physical state and are the material from which my art is made. Opposites combine, the incomprehensible becomes visible, abysses open up and unexpected potentials become visible…”.

Schautz’s art is a homage to human nature, sometimes calm, sometimes wild, with images that are self-portraits of personal struggles and triumphs. They reflect what moves us humans most: the question of the self and its emancipation.

About Lucia Schautz

Schautz studied performance, painting and stage and costume design at the Academy of Fine Arts and received an art scholarship in Paris. In 2013, she made her debut on the art market with two one-artist shows at Art Köln and Karlsruhe and a sold-out exhibition at Galerie Sybille Mang with large-format portraits of women. It is only in recent years that she has increasingly turned to a holistic approach, emphasising the psychological and abstract aspects of her work. Schautz’s current interdisciplinary work is the result of many years of development, bringing together different artistic disciplines and experiences.

The artist is driven by the conviction that creating and viewing art that deals with difficult, often elusive or unspoken issues can be a catalyst for personal growth and social change. For this reason, the artist likes to work across disciplines and in different contexts and sees her performance art primarily as a way to provoke thought on a very personal level and provide inspiration for new ways of living.

“My work deals with inner states expressed through the body as a mental and physical reservoir of experience, trauma and inner healing. Each work is part of a bodily movement, an inner psychic experience, of the intimate recesses, fault lines, eroded deposits, differences and worlds that we carry within us as we move in a society that judges and acts on the basis of an often purely external reality. In a world where AI permeates all areas of life, it is time to look more inward. So that we remain connected to ourselves despite these new forms of interaction and make smart decisions that integrate human being into world affairs…”.