Most of Schmuckler’s work is inspired by Google image searches for Halloween masks, and his current full-figure practice evolved from drawing masks exclusively. Drawn in ballpoint pen with marker and/or acrylic paint marker, his pieces evoke powerful expressive moments that are delightfully grotesque. While his interpretations of the faces of his figures are based on visual reference imagery, their bodies are largely invented from his imagination. He has indicated that his figurative works are portraits of himself in various costumes, which is consistent with his passion for acting and dancing through characters. The drawings embody not just his own playful interpretation of source imagery, but erect an identity for himself within that edifice, always occupying a villainous space. He portrays characters from both contemporary and classic horror reimagined as Halloween masks, including Nemesis (a pursuer in Resident Evil, a survival horror game and movie franchise), Dracula, Pennywise the Clown (Stephen King’s It), and various werewolves. Schmuckler’s process of stylization emphasizes the basic compositional elements of the masks, like the negative space created by an empty eye socket, or the rhythmic pattern of serrated teeth. In his hand, the strip mall Halloween store aesthetic becomes a compelling, sophisticated visual exploration of the poetry of gore.

Beyond their fascination with horror, both artists seem deeply amused by the subject as well. There is an appreciation for the absurd present in both of their work, from Chew’s tenderly rendered disembodied head with green tentacles from The Brain (1988) to Schmuckler’s representation of a grungy long-haired killer from Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects (2005) wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with STAY BACK / KEEP OUT / WHO SCARY. This carries through the artists’ more gruesome representations as well. The truth of what they convey – someone peeling their face back to reveal their true identity as a lizard, a person with a face so mangled it appears as hunks of flesh and holes – is too horrifying to actually take in. This representational divide makes us more aware of the distancing, dissociative mechanisms that are active within us at all times in navigating contemporary visual culture.

The shift in cinematic horror over the decades is embodied in Peter Bogdanoivch’s Targets (1968), in which Boris Karloff plays an aging monster movie star in a world where current events begin to occupy a more horrific place in our psyches than fantasy, articulating the fundamental shift from scary-creature horror films to the mental anguish and fear of The Silence of the Lambs (1991). While Bogdonavich may have felt the shift from monsters to serial killers signified a move away from pure fantasy, both Schmuckler and Chew are clearly still able to delight in the fantastical elements of the genre, even as it becomes more realistically grotesque. Both have a deeply felt understanding of horror as an outlet, a subliminal, alternative space within the screen. Whether probing its abstraction (like Chew through her monitor) or inviting it into their physical reality (like Schmuckler in costume), they use horror fantasy as a vessel to capture something essential about their worldview, and ask the viewer to contemplate their own reality through this darkly humorous lens.