Event detail
Jon Pylypchuk: just sit back and recount the violence of one year
9. Jan - 21. Feb 09 / ended Alison Jacques Gallery
Jon Pylypchuk, You control my rage, I will control the world, 2007 Mixed media Dimeansions: 226 x 160 x 110 cms / 89 x 63 x 43 ins
“Evoking unconditional empathy, Pylypchuk's mischievous cohort of furry victims and bastards become endearing effigies of the dark side of social psychology. Transforming the unthinkable into sub-human form, Pylypchuk's characters are neutral targets for emotional displacement…Playing out horror and grief with child-like naivety and chilling detachment, he relates fairytales of tactlessness, discomfort and inadequacy. Yet throughout Pylypchuk's work there is an irresistible optimism, an underdog's against-all-odds drive for meaningful existence in a barbaric world.”
Patricia Ellis, USA Today: New American Art from The Saatchi Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, London
Alison Jacques Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by the Canadian artist Jon Pylypchuk. The artist's third solo exhibition with the gallery will feature a large sculptural installation, a number of new paintings on panel, and a new series of collaged works on paper.
This show coincides with Jon Pylypchuk's first European solo survey show at the Städtische Ausstellungshalle, Münster (February 6 – May 3, 2009) ahead of his USA solo show at the Blaffer Gallery, The Art Museum of the University of Houston in September 2009.
Working across a range of media Pylypchuk populates his paintings, sculptures and films with a menagerie of dysfunctional furry creatures composed in various tableaux through which the artist examines the human condition. The mini dramas Pylypchuk stages always have wider philosophical implications for our ideas of love, rejection and pain. Typically humorous and cruel the titles of these works express the blackly ironic personal thoughts of Pylypchuk's protagonists.
In the main gallery, the installation just sit back and recount the violence of one year (2008) is a beach scene featuring a gang of animal sculptures, including a number of mangy cats and an elephant, who snort cocaine from the belly of a large walrus. The work is constructed using the artist's signature crude materials that include glue, fabric fragments, felt, and wood scraps.
In the painting don't worry it won't rain on you everyday (2008), the handwritten words of the title issue from the mouth of a hybrid figure as he lectures two smaller bedraggled minors. All three characters are collaged from fabric off-cuts who stand upon a terrain of rocky red cement mounds within an orange resin background. Another painting, you are a mess and will continue to be so (2008), is painted in a cooler palette, predominantly blues and greens, and features a family of similarly downtrodden creatures. Their felt bodies merge tonally in the alien landscape and it is only their speech bubbles and bulging white eyes that keep them from disappearing altogether into the pools of resinous colour behind them.
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