URBANITES 

Urbanites is Schnitzler’s response to New York City’s iconic Houston Bowery Wall—a site that has long functioned as a public register of the city’s visual and cultural pulse. Since Keith Haring inaugurated its legacy with a mural in 1982, the wall has hosted contributions by artists including JR, Banksy, Shepard Fairey, Kenny Scharf, Ron English, Aiko Nakagawa, Futura, David Flores, and Tomokazu Matsuyama—forming an ever-evolving visual archive of the city.

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The Urbanites series consists of large-scale photographic collages depicting human silhouettes in motion, constructed entirely from crushed beverage cans collected on New York’s streets. These discarded materials—creased, scuffed, and marked by daily use—are compressed into dense, stratified figures that resemble fossilized imprints: bodies reduced to trace.

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Rooted in observation, Urbanites reflects a city defined by movement—people navigating crowds, passing without pause, carrying private histories through public space. Schnitzler freezes these transient moments, rendering anonymous figures mid-stride, bent in thought, conversation, or anticipation. They do not perform; they endure.

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By using crushed cans as both image and substance, the work binds human presence to the residue of urban life. Scratches, folds, and stains remain visible, transforming waste into witness. Consumption becomes surface; movement becomes sediment.

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Installed at architectural scale, Urbanites functions as both image and environment. The figures confront the viewer directly, forming a collective portrait of the city’s inhabitants—compressed by invisible systems, yet sustaining the pulse of New York through sheer presence.