Los Angeles-based multimedia artist Marty Schnapf (USA b. 1977) works in painting, drawing, sculpture, installation and performance. Schnapf’s world evokes an inconstant sensual and psychological space of dream, desire, memory, and premonition. Schnapf grew up in a farmhouse in Newburgh, Indiana, and began his art making outdoors, often using sticks, coals, and rocks. When his house burned down at the age of seven, the charred wood that was left behind held a new resonance for him. It became both a beautiful and terrible marker on Schnapf's life that influenced a charcoal drawing practice he continues to this day.
In his paintings, figures overlap frequently, or a single figure assumes various irreconcilable positions. In addition, structurally dematerialized environments surround and penetrate these figures. By dissolving and dislocating such compositional elements, Schnapf presents two sides of a singular moment: its pure depiction and its imagined state. Schnapf recent work is in painting and drawing (often charcoal), and his figures are often shown as both intertwined and solitary, and seem barely contained, pushing against the edges of each composition.
Schnapf received his BFA from Wittenberg University, Springfield, Ohio (1999). His figurative drawings were the subject of a solo exhibition, Loves and Lovers, at Diane Rosenstein Gallery, Los Angeles, CA in 2019. Other recent solo presentations of painting include those at Santa Ana Winds, Alice Black Gallery, London and Fissures in the Fold, Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles (2018). His paintings were featured on Platform (2022), and recently included in Vivacité, Gallerie Italienne, Paris (2021); Dark Waters, WLCAC, Watts, California (2021); Rites of Passage, Unit London, London (2021); All Tomorrow’s Parties, domicile (n.), Curated by Michael Slenske, Los Angeles (2021); and Drive-By-Art (Organized by Warren Neidich, Renee Petropoulos, Michael Slenske and Anuradha Vikram), Los Angeles (2020). This artist lives and works in Los Angeles.