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Jon Pylypchuk - Artists - Petzel Gallery

Jon Pylypchuk (b. 1972, Winnipeg, Canada)

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 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.

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; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Saatchi Collection, London; MONA Museum, Berriedale, Tazmania; the Stedelijik Museum, Gent, and the Whitney Museum, New York.

Pylypchuk collapses that distance by mining his own experience and emotions to produce a palpable sense of pathos.

Alex John Beck, “Discovery Beings with Drawing,” Upstate Diary, April 2020

Career Highlights

Jon Pylypchuk - Artists - Petzel Gallery

Installation view, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, 2006

1972 Born Winnipeg, Canada

1996 Studied at the University of Manitoba School of Art, where Pylypchuk 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.

1998 Pylypchuk moves to Los Angeles, where he is currently based

2001 Premier exhibition with Petzel, New York

2006 Meditations in an Emergency, Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit

Survey exhibition at Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland

2007 Phantasmania, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City

 

Jon Pylypchuk - Artists - Petzel Gallery

Installation view, Waiting for the Next Nirvana, Petzel Gallery, New York, 2020

2009 Survey exhibition at Blaffer Gallery, The Art Museum at the University of Houston

2010 Survey exhibition at Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Montréal

2012 Sydney Biennial, Sydney, Australia

2015 Kisk (Pylypchuk’s KISS tribute band) performs at Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles

2018 Bombay Beach Biennale, Bombay Beach, CA

2020 Waiting for the Next Nirvana, Petzel Gallery, New York

2021 What have we missed, Petzel Gallery, New York