DAVID SCHU

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David Schu

For David Schu, the mark comes first. Layering his drawings with a series of emphatic gestures, Schu considers the act of placing charcoal to paper as the point of origin for his ideas. Each line contributes to the sense energy that permeates his works and seems appropriate for his subject. Interested in experimenting with iconography, the artist selected the common moth. With its associations of obsession, change, death, and rebirth, Schu explored this form via a wide variety of media. In Back Through the Bug, for example, the moth is suspended in a cavern-like space, seemingly caught at a critical juncture between the decision to escape through the opening in the distance or the decision to continue into the darkness. That decisive moment is similarly evoked in his work, Nightfall. An anvil looms ominously above the moth, mirroring the uncertainty and unperceived threats of life. Appropriately, the artist relied on the contrast between the delicate mulberry paper and his heavy lines to convey this symbolic imbalance.