JON PYLYPCHUK [email protected] WWW.MIERGALLERY.COM 7277 SANTA MONICA BOULEVARD LOS ANGELES, CA, 90042 T: 323-498-5957 Pylypchuk is a multidisciplinary artist who works in painting, sculpture, installation and video. Working with simple materials (fake fur, wood, fabric, sheet metal, beer cans, electric light bulbs, polyurethane foam, etc.), Pylypchuk reinterprets the collage and bricolage practices derived from Art Brut. Often his ‘creatures’ draw upon the animal world to explore the frailty of human existence and social relationships. Pylypchuk’s characters often seem to have lost their way, appearing in a wounded condition, harmed by either themselves or by others. They combine a hearty dose of cynicism and anger at the unfairness of it all with a wicked sense of survivalist humor. Since coming to international attention in the past 6 years he has exhibited in New York, Düsseldorf, Münster, London, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Paris, San Francisco, Miami, Tokyo, Montreal, Seoul, Guadalajara and St. Petersburg. His works are in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Saatchi Collection, London; The Museum of Old and New Art, Berriedale; and the Whitney Museum, New York. Jon Pylypchuk was born in 1972 in Winnipeg, Canada. He studied at the University of Manitoba School of Art, where he co-founded the collective known as the Royal Art Lodge in 1996 with fellow artists Michael Dumontier, Marcel Dzama, Neil Farber, Drue Langlois and Adrian Williams. Its members were mostly graduates from the University of Manitoba, Canada who were united in their outsider status and who liked to break the unwritten rules of artistic production. They sent childlike drawings to the National Gallery of Canada, suggesting they exhibit them, and held all-night drawing sessions. In 1998 he moved to Los Angeles, where he is currently based. SELECTED WORKS Jon Pylypchuk Disco Sucks!, 2019 Handmade wood pedestal, stainless steel, found Christmas tree, volleyballs, black cue balls, LED lights, Christmas ornaments, Ring doorbell 88 x 37 x 37 in, 223.5 x 94 x 94 cm Jon Pylypchuk I have pink eye too, 2018 Bronze and enamel paint on wooden plinth 31 x 38 x 7 1/2 in, 78.7 x 96.5 x 19.1 cm (JPY18.020) Jon Pylypchuk Hey fuckface, the kids are here!, 2018 Spray Foam, Wood, Aerosol, Tires and Gloves 82 x 42 x 29 in, 208.3 x 106.7 x 73.7 cm Jon Pylypchuk American Moses, 2018 Bronze and enamel paint on wooden plinth 40 x 51 1/2 x 19 1/2 in, 101.6 x 130.8 x 49.5 cm Jon Pylypchuk Good morning tiger!, 2018 Bronze and enamel paint on wooden plinth 23 x 29 1/2 x 10 3/4 in, 58.4 x 74.9 x 27.3 cm Jon Pylypchuk I like your face, can I lick it?, 2018 Cast aluminum, acrylic paint, LED light bulbs 47 3/8 x 31 1/2 x 2 in, 120.3 x 80 x 5.1 cm Jon Pylypchuk They used to call me “the voidlord” now I go by jeff with a G, 2018. Cast bronze, light bulbs, spray paint, and enamel paint 25 x 20 3/4 x 2 in, 63.5 x 52.7 x 5.1 cm INSTALLATION VIEWS Installation view of Jon Pylypchuk, lost in your eyes, (August 23 – September 15, 2018) Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Installation View of Jon Pylypchuk American Moses (May 12–June 16, 2018) Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Installation View of Jon Pylypchuk American Moses (May 12–June 16, 2018) Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Installation View of Jon Pylypchuk American Moses (May 12–June 16, 2018) Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles, CA PRESS Novemner 9th, 2016 JON PYLYPCHUK: Darkness by Appointment Only A conversation with the L.A.-based mixed media artist behind our Nocturne Issue cover Sitting amongst mixed media artist Jon Pylypchuk’s incarnations of his famed character sculptures made of stacked tires, as well as his automatic “face paintings” depicting large, slightly crestfallen eyes in his studio near downtown Los Angeles, I am struck by how the artist’s oversized black-rimmed glasses seem to mirror the open, playful nature of his creations. Born to a Ukrainian family in Winnipeg, Canada, Pylypchuk made a name for himself with his whimsical, storybook-like characters composed of fake fur and wood but displaying occasional sexual and violent tendencies—yet always portrayed with a touch of levity. Having exhibited at the UCLA Hammer Museum, the Royal Academy in London, and represented by Friedrich Petzel in New York, Pylypchuk’s trajectory in the art world is impressive, yet growing up he never saw himself pursuing a career in art. Rather he dreamed of being a musician, but after learning that he was failing many of his undergraduate classes at the University of Manitoba, the school pushed him into an art class with the promise of clearing his record: “I never had any interest in art.” He explains, “I had a friend who was taking an Introduction to Art class—I had failed pretty much every class in col- lege—they said that if I could get a ‘B’ in the class, I could go into the art school. I realized that all of the things I was trying to do in music, the emotions I was trying to convey, just didn’t translate. But with art, it was a whole different thing.” Finally finding a means of expression that worked for him, Pylypchuk began making sculptures with his friends, and upon graduation became a member of “Winnipeg institution” artist collective The Royal Art Lodge (1996–2008) founded by Adrian Williams, Neil Farber, Michael Dumontier, Marcel Dzama, and Drue Langlois. He only stayed with the group for a few years as his individual work began to take a more independent shape, and he soon found himself dealing with the anxiety surrounding the aging and death of his family. Pylypchuk remembers, “My mother was 44 when I was born. My father was 48. She was the youngest of her family, so all of her siblings and family started dying when I was a kid. They constantly reminded me that they were going to die. As a kid, it was just normal because everyone around me was dying. It just seemed totally normal that my parents would, too. I worried about it all the time. A lot of that translated into things that I was making.” He started to create sculptural characters inspired by his family situation as well as his parents’ arguments, finding the dichotomy of the situational darkness and the cuteness of the characters intriguing. He recalls that his parents “fought all of the time. They were like dirt farmers from Ukraine who got some free land in Canada. They moved to Canada and realized that the land was shit. So, they drank. They fought. Whatever was happening in my life like that, obviously it didn’t affect me on a day-to-day basis, but it was in there all the time. I realized that when I started making these characters, I could make them interact in the way I saw people around me interact. I just thought that the juxtaposition of the cute with this evil was sort of nice.” Faces (and especially eyes) are often one of the first means of connection between people. eW are one of the only species who value eye contact as a relationship-builder, and not a threat. When I ask Py- lypchuk the reason behind centering his oil paintings around colossal eyes, he responds, “I think it had something to do with when my father died. When the funeral director showed him to us, it almost looked like they had overfilled him with embalming fluid. It was really weird. So, my wife and I decided that we wanted to have a closed casket because he wasn’t a vain man, but he definitely wanted to look good. He asked us to have a ceremony with a priest from the church he had gone to. We got into it with the priest over the closed casket. He’s like, “There’s no way to bless the body if the water doesn’t touch him.” I’m like,” Are you kidding me? God’s water can’t go through wood?” I was under a fair amount of stress and didn’t want to continue fighting the priest. I wanted to support my dad’s wishes to have that type of funer- al. At some point, I kind of gave up. All the while, I kept thinking to myself, I should have stood up for him more. I think rebuilding these faces and trying to make them beautiful is me trying to rebuild his face.” While certainly a storyteller in his work, Pylypchuk is also a builder, often tapping into his subconscious mind to construct many of his sculptures, including his most recent tire creations. “I’m not thinking about anything,” he says, “I’ll take a second and look at it and I’ll go, ‘No, that’s not how it goes.’ I’ll take it apart, stack it again, and again, and realize that this is the order that makes the most sense visually and com- positionally. I think that the sculptures work in a similar way to the way a hand works in an automatic painting. The less you think about it, the more successful you’ll end up being.” In 2004, Tom Morton, writing for Frieze said, “Chuckling at Pylypchuk’s sorry, hilarious creatures (which are, of course, avatars of our own sorry, hilarious selves) embroils us in a connectedness that, far from being abstract, we feel in the creasing of our lips or in the wobbling throb of a belly laugh.” This assess- ment feels particularly apt when, amidst the tottering tires, and wide, abstract eyes, Pylypchuk tells me about the founding of Grice Bench two years ago—a gallery in downtown Los Angeles—and the networks that have developed around it: “It’s like a family.” Pylypchuk tells me, “It is the community I was looking for.” January 14th, 2009 Artist of the week 24: Jon Pylypchuk Jessica Lack considers the menacing but hopeful work of Jon Pylypchuk whose freakish outsid- ers reflect our own physical and spiritual frailties A detail from Jon Pylypchuk’s ‘your name will be the last thing i say when i die’.