The cover image for this issue of Artkrush is a detail of Spiderman 3, an expansive oil painting by Dana Schutz in which lilac letters tattoo a barren landscape like an unorthodox billboard. Schutz's subject is rife with tension — typical for the young artist, who is known as much for her humor and irreverence as for her intelligence and gravitas. The painting is on view through April 26 as a part of If It Appears in the Desert, Schutz's second solo show at Contemporary Fine Arts in Berlin.

Born in 1976 in Livonia, Michigan, Schutz began painting under the tutelage of her mother, a high-school art teacher. She went on to earn a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2000, and an MFA from Columbia University in 2002. Within a year of her graduation, Schutz had participated in the Prague and Venice Biennales, and found favor with advertising tycoon Charles Saatchi. The artist has since enjoyed solo exhibitions with Zach Feuer Gallery in New York and Contemporary Fine Arts in Berlin, and a retrospective at the Rose Museum of Brandeis University in Boston. Her paintings have found their way into the collections of the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

A vibrant palette, absurd motifs, and liberal brushstrokes distinguish Schutz from her peers. Long a critical darling, she has held the art world's interest with disturbing canvases that tackle death, dismemberment, birth, and fantasy. Presentation — a mural-sized work from 2005, now at MoMA — features two jaundiced, prostrate figures, displayed before a glassy-eyed crowd. Largely foregrounded, the first figure's entrails spill out beneath his skeletal rib cage, while his broken arm is unnaturally slung above his agape, staring face. The scenario begs for an explanation, but withholds it, simultaneously appealing to the viewer's compassion, curiosity, and desire to rubberneck. Schutz's more recent work plays with abstraction. Matisse-like patterns dominate 2008's politically charged Shooting in Natural Environments, while Cleveland, from 2007, abandons the figure entirely in favor of green and orange gesture. Whether working on a still life or portrait, Schutz recreates people and places that resemble reality, but live primarily in her mind. - Lauren McKee