Schooled

In Schooled, North Carolina artist Natalie Schorr dives beneath the surface to reimagine the ocean’s most curious residents. Triggerfish, flatfish, pufferfish, and eels emerge in bold graffiti-style stencils and richly textured gelli plate prints, their forms layered with vintage wallpapers, spray paint, and acrylics. These popsurrealist visions blend the cheerful and the uncanny: bright splashes and muted washes mingle across patterned backdrops, while each quirky sea creature peers out with a slightly unsettling, unmistakably human gaze.

Schorr’s compositions revel in contradiction — playful yet faintly disquieting, familiar yet dreamlike. The tactile mix of collage and paint hints at the patina of found objects and the improvisation of street art, while the unexpected pairing of marine life and human features invites both delight and double-take. In these works, the ocean becomes a stage for the strange, where whimsy and the uncanny swim side by side.

This is a selection of works from this show.