Pieter Schoolwerth

Pieter Schoolwerth explores and experiments with the effects of generalized abstraction on representations of the human form in painting. His works are complex compositions combining drawn, printed, painted pictorial elements and computer generated imagery. His method reflects the destabilized process of identity construction in an age characterized by increasingly abstract social relations. Schoolwerth literalizes the formation, superimposition, and alienation of the contemporary body through the manipulation of multiple media and layers of material content.

Pieter Schoolwerth, born in 1970, received his BFA from the California Institute of the Arts in 1994. He lives and works in New York.

His work has been exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions at Stavanger Art Museum, Norway (2023); Petzel Gallery, New York (2022); Petzel Gallery, New York (2022, solo); Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin (2022, solo); Kunstverein Hannover (2021, solo); Petzel Gallery, New York (2020, solo); Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin (2019, solo); the Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson (2018); Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York (2017, solo); Capitain Petzel, Berlin (2017, solo); theWhitney Museum of American Art, New York (2016); 356 Mission, Los Angeles (2015, solo); Gallery SKE,New Delhi (2014, solo); Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Brussels (2013, solo); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2006); Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York (2005, solo); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2002); American Fine Arts, New York (2001, solo) and Greene Naftali Gallery, New York (1996, solo).

From 2003 to 2013, Schoolwerth ran Wierd Records and the Wierd Party at Home Sweet Home on the LES of New York. Wierd released music by 42 bands working in the genres of minimal electronics, coldwave and noise, and produced over 500 live music, dj, and performance art events internationally.

His works are in the collections of:

Stavanger Art Museum, Norway

Aïshti Foundation, Beirut

Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Denver Art Museum

Deutsche Bank Collection, New York

Orange County Museum of Art, California

Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig, Germany

Kistefos Museum and Sculpture Park in Jevnaker, Norway

Norton Museum, West Palm Beach

Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art