Charles Lutz is an American painter born in 1982 near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Lutz studied Painting and Art History at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, and Anatomy at Columbia University, NY. He earned a BFA from the Pratt Institute College of Art in 2004. Lutz lives and works between Red Lion, PA and Brooklyn, NY.
Lutz most recently exhibited a series of new sculptures at Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater in Mill Run, PA, in 2022. He drew inspiration from the iconic home and the objects once sold at the Kaufmann's Department Store, which helped fund its construction.
Since his first solo exhibition in 2007, Lutz's work has been featured in major galleries and institutions across the US and abroad, including the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, the Artipelag Museum in Stockholm, the New Museum in New York, and the Dickinson Gallery in New York, among others. His work, which addresses themes of consumerism and originality, has garnered significant critical acclaim and has even been cited in the Supreme Court case Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith.
Lutz is widely recognized for his exploration of originality within the art world, particularly through his series of "Denied" Warhol works. These works were intentionally submitted to the Warhol Authentication Board to be formally denied as an act of creative destruction. His art engages with the tradition of the ready-made in contemporary and modern art, examining cultural relationships with originality, consumerism, and consumption.
In his exhibition "Charts, Price Lists, Corrections, and Other Relevant Statements" at the Brooklyn project space Five Myles, Lutz explored themes of consumption and ego through large-scale paintings based on auction sales price lists from Christie's and Sotheby's, as well as large-scale photo-based works referencing the auction houses' promotional materials.[1]
Lutz continued his exploration of value and transference in his 2013 show "Ends and Means," focusing on the abstraction of value and the trace of currency movements. One of the most iconic pieces from this exhibition was a 12-foot-tall monochrome red oil painting of former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Other works included paintings constructed from used currency bank bags and large paintings based on re-transcriptions of robbery notes. The show was reviewed in both Modern Painters and The Wall Street Journal.[2] [3]
Later in 2013, Lutz created one of his largest public installations to date for the 100th anniversary of Marcel Duchamp's groundbreaking and controversial Armory Show. Curated by Eric Shiner, the former director of The Andy Warhol Museum, for Armory Focus: USA, Lutz's site-specific installation, "Babel," was inspired by Pieter Bruegel's famous painting. The installation featured 1,500 cardboard replicas of Warhol's Brillo Box (Stockholm Type), stacked 20 feet tall. All 1,500 boxes were then freely distributed to the public, thereby debasing the Brillo Box as an art commodity and challenging its willing consumers.[4] [5]