Aurel Schmidt: Florid Reveries

Delicate floral creations meet rough and ready makeshift vases courtesy of buzzed-about artist Aurel Schmidt and her trusty set of drawing pencils. The Canadian creative teamed up with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Franz Wright to create Reveries of a Lost Life Mask, an art book pairing simple long-verse poems alongside a collection of weird and wonderful works featuring cartoon-like figures and pencil-drawn still lifes decorated with Schmidt’s usual array of real hair, tea bag stains and bottle tops. Schmidt broke onto the art scene in 2006 when collector Dakis Joannou, owner of the infamous Koons-designed yacht, bought two of her works in a show curated by Tim Barber, and the bespectacled artist has since shown at the OHWOW Gallery and was chosen as part of the 2010 Whitney Museum biennale. “There’s a girly charm to her work,” says Reveries… publisher Aron Morel of Schmidt’s success, “but it’s quite brutal at the same time. It’s so intricate and fascinating.”