SELECTED WORKS BY Jon Pylypchuk
Click on the images to enlarge
Jon Pylypchuk
I miss you, danger, and all its elements
2006
Wood, wood glue, fake fur, hot glue, watercolor, polyurethane, cotton
84 x 94 x |
 |
Jon Pylypchuk’s work evolves from the realm of the pathetic. His drawings and sculptures bring to life a make-believe world populated by abused cuddly creatures, where emotional frailty and menace are worn on every shirt sleeve and pet tag. Mirroring the naked state of the human condition, Pylpchuk’s tragic-comic figures are both loveable and loathsome, recreating instances of pitiful irony that ring all too true. In I Miss You, Danger… Pylypchuk’s raggedy poodle sulks in the discontents of retirement, the kicked dog epitome of loneliness and obsolescence. |
Jon Pylypchuk
So then we will burn you when you are dead
2006
Wood, wood glue, fake fur, hot glue, watercolor, polyurethane, cotton
244 x 203 x |
 |
Jon Pylypchuk makes his sculptures from the most impoverished materials: scraps of wood, remnant fabric, felt, glitter, and glue. Rendered with wonky ‘best attempt’ aesthetics, Pylypchuk mines all the sentimental authenticity of the unloved yet hopeful media of craft camps and community workshops. So Then We Will Burn You… pictures wee critters gathering around their stricken colleague. Reducing the moral sophistication of the adult world to artless simplicity, Pylypchuk plays out horror and grief with child-like naiveté and chilling matter-of-fact-ness, authoring a folktale of tactlessness, discomfort, and inadequacy. |
Jon Pylypchuk
Don't press too much luck
2006
Wood, wood glue, fake fur, hot glue, watercolor, polyurethane, cotton
Large cat: 109 x 31.8 x 28 cm |
 |
Jon Pylypchuk’s menagerie of cartoon animals evokes unconditional empathy. Attributed with all the unsavoury traits of human character, his varmint cohort of furry victims and bastards become endearing effigies of the dark side of social psychology. Transposing the unthinkable (or unadmitable) into sub-human form, Pylypchuk’s characters become neutral targets for emotional displacement; in his gawpy animal kingdom there is no right or wrong, only a Darwinian hierarchy and Peter Principle law of nature. In Don’t Press Too Much Luck, Pylypchuk’s black cats’ sexual behaviour is cringe-worthy in its aura of patchwork innocence. Velvety plush with slitty vamp eyes, Pylypchuk’s characters are irresistibly charming in their obscenity. |
Jon Pylypchuk
Hopefully, I will live through this with a little bit of dignity
2005
Mixed Media
203 x 800 x 800 cm |
 



|
Throughout Jon Pylypchuk’s work is an irrepressible optimism, an underdog’s against-all-odds drive for meaningful existence in a barbaric world. Hopefully I Will Live Through This… sprawls across the gallery floor in a chaotic rodent war of puke and death, as tiny rat-soldiers meet their demise not in a moment of battle glory, but an outbreak of poisoning. Crafted with farcical malevolence, Pylypchuk implies an ‘us vs. them’ narrative featuring viewer as villain: his microcosm spoilt by a towering on-looking exterminator. There’s a pang of sympathy as the cute little nasties limp on gun-crutches and writhe in agony, but it’s only momentary in the over all satisfaction of poetic justice well served. |
Jon Pylypchuk
I will wait for you to get up/ you will wait for a long time
2006
Mixed media
on panel |
 |
Teetering between lush romantic painting and South Park style animation, Jon Pylypchuk’s drawings extract the abject from the intrinsically beautiful. Against a resounding background of lava-like paint, Pylypchuk builds a topsy turvy terrain from hobby shop resources: felt, sand pipe cleaners, and coloured paper combine in a cut and paste outpouring of sincerity. Exquisitely detailed and comically homely, I Will Wait For You… exudes a humility ripe for rebuffing. |
Jon Pylypchuk
I will be gentle with you/if you are kind I will love you
2006
Mixed media
on panel |
 |
Jon Pylypchuk’s work draws from the tradition of the Outsider. Taking influence from both North American folk art and Art Brut, his work embraces a value of genuine unmitigated expression and beauty in the discarded. In I Will Be Gentle With You… Pylypchuk’s textured surface is reminiscent of paintings by Jean Dubuffet. Through collage, Pylypchuk’s drawings gain a physicality in keeping with his inspirational subject matter. Fragile, clumsy, and guileless, their elegance lies in their subtle imperfection and makeshift abasement. |
Jon Pylypchuk
your brother is adopted / and I slept with him / so / so
2006
Mixed media
on panel |
 |
Engulfed by an expressive red-orange sky, Jon Pylypchuk’s Your Brother Is Adopted… humorously transforms the transcendentalism of colour-field painting into a slacker zone of emotional numbness. Composing a landscape from lumpy formalism, heavy shapes of black, brown and silver strive for compositional pretension in their lowly tourist shop media of sand painting. Adorning his canvas with scraps of fabric and paper, Pylypchuk underwrites his inadequate gesture with a script of two scraggly figures puffing fags, bored by both the sublime and the salacious. |
|
|
ARTIST INFORMATION
Jon Pylypchuk's BIOGRAPHY

1972
Born in Winnipeg, Canada
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2006
You are all too close to dropping off now, Alison Jacques Gallery, London
2005
Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York
Ghislaine Hussenot, Paris
Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland
2004
You won’t live past 30, With Adrian Williams, China Art Objects Galleries, Los Angeles
You are the only one left, Galleri Christina Wilson, Copenhagen
3 Rooms 3 Artists, Alison Jacques Gallery, London
Jon Pylypchuk, Locust Projects, Miami
erections pointing at stars and angels, aspreyjacques, London
2003
Just plug everyone now, Borgmann Nathusius, Koln
And now occasionally and reluctantly I lift my head from where it usually hangs in shame, Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York
2002
If wishes were horses, China Art Objects Galleries, Los Angeles
2001
Don’t let me down / this is all you are allowed, Borgmann.Nathusius, Koln
The crying, no arms, mournful thoughts society, Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York
2000
How to live to 100, China Art Objects Galleries, Los Angeles,
1999
One day art sale, China Art Objects Galleries, Los Angeles,
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2005
Gallery Exchange, China Art Objects at Bowievanvalen, Amsterdam
2004
Massimo de Carlo, Milan
2003
Project room, Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo
Atto Primo, Studio Massimo De Carlo, Milan
Rendered: Works on paper from 46 artists, Sara Meltzer Gallery, New York
Some Things We Like..., aspreyjacques, London
Royal Art Lodge: Ask the Dust, The Drawing Center, New York
Works for Giovanni, China Art Objects Galleries, Los Angeles
2002
I’m from Orange County and I Drink Johnny Walker Red, Galerie Julius Hummel, Vienna
21 Paintings from L.A., Art Museum, San Bernardino
Stranger than fiction, Nylon Gallery, London, England
Fantasyland, D’Amelio Terras New York
Drive By, curated by Katie Brennan, Reynolds Gallery, Richmond
2001
Cancelled Art Fair, China Art Objects, Los Angeles
Snapshot: New Art from Los Angeles, UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami
Group Exhibition, China Art Objects Galleries, Los Angeles
Paper, Borgmann.Nathusius, Koln
2000
China Art Objects, Sadie Coles HQ, London
Circles, ZKM Museum, Karlsruhe, Germany
Project: 0004, Friedrich Petzel, New York
New School, works on paper, inc., Los Angeles
1997
Drawing with the Royal Art Lodge, Royal Art Lodge, Winnipeg, Canada
|
| |
|
|
| |
|