JON PYLYPCHUK

Petzel is pleased to present a new body of work from multidisciplinary artist Jon Pylypchuk. Continuing his long engagement with found objects and scrap materials, Pylypchuk sources secondhand purses as the bases from which he embeds a potent interiority, naming each sculpture after an imagined individual. Calling to mind the lineages of North American folk art movements and Art Brut, the artist’s pathos-laden ‘creatures’ often draw upon the animal world to explore the frailty of human existence and social relationships.

Marla Coates sneers at the viewer with sly confidence, while Luella Grace wells up with teal tears streaming beneath two expressive orbs. Pylypchuk further buttresses the biographies of each ‘creature’ in the form of imagined dialogues, immortalized through handwritten letters. These epistolary messages call to mind the text trails which often spooled in tiny, handwritten ribbons from the mouths of characters depicted in the artist’s early collage paintings. Pylypchuk has left many of these notes tucked in the bodies of his sculptures, imbuing them with unique backstories.