Schutter, was born in Pennsylvania in 1974, is known today for his mid-scale, quasi-monochrome gray paintings—meticulous marvels of surface texture and illusory nuance that, when seen up close, reveal the riches and range of this seemingly most neutral of colors. Indeed, the crux of Schutter’s project is located in the patience and probing focus of his gaze; so too the experience of viewing his work requires lengthy looking. David Schutter’s practice is a form of phenomenological study that discusses the distances and problems encountered when making a painting. His works are as much performative re-enactments of specific canonical sources as they are paintings and drawings, and as such form a painter’s repertory of extended rehearsals. Schutter locates his practice within the traditions of philosophical inquiry by beginning with the surfaces of things. His questions elicit responses to how we re-stratify our knowledge of the past while developing representations of the present.