FREDRIC SNITZER GALLERY

Jonathan Pylypchuk
i love you like a milkshake

Fredric Snitzer Gallery is pleased to present, i love you like a milkshake, an exhibition surveying Jon Pylypchuk’s artistic practice over the past 5 years. Included in this exhibition are a selection of large-scale paintings that showcase variances in approach to the medium and the artist’s overall oeuvre in the genre. Shown alongside these paintings is a large sculpture comprised of cast, worn tires – a new venture into material exploration of large-scale cast bronze.

 Pylypchuk has focused much of his career on building characters that exemplify the most intimate and often pathetic moments in life. His satirical approach to narratives within his work often suggests the fragility of the human experience in the most forthright, often comical means; a tale of inadequacy oozing with utmost irony and a dose of cynicism.

He builds these characters using a bricolage of scrappy materials (fake fur, wood, fabric, sheet metal, porcelain, tires, electric bulbs, polyurethane foam). His newest works in the exhibition best express this material usage and ethos. “not fucked yet buddy”, fashioned out of old clothing and discarded wood on canvas, chronicles a father son relationship fraught with the anxieties and growing pains of youth today.

 Among the works shown, are a series of face paintings chronicling an evolution of material and application. Pylypchuk’s process is reminiscent of action painting;  his gestural and spontaneous drippings of enamel paint are applied to create various forms until a ‘face’ appears. These faces over the years have evolved into a menagerie of colors, materials, transitioning from minimalist to dizzyingly indulgent compositions on the threshold of ornamentation. 

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.

Pylypchuk has exhibited in New York, Düsseldorf, Münster, London, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Paris, San Francisco, Miami, Tokyo, Montreal, Seoul, Guadalajar 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; Henry Art Gallery, Seatlle; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; and the Whitney Museum, New York.