ARTISTS
Jonathan Pylypchuk
Nearly two thousand years ago, in 79 ad, the Roman city of Pompeii was destroyed and buried by two days of lava swells and volcanic ash from Mt.
Natalie Haddad / The Brooklyn Rail
Nearly two thousand years ago, in 79 ad, the Roman city of Pompeii was destroyed and buried by two days of lava swells and volcanic ash from Mt. Vesuvius. Among the ruins, the city鈥檚 excavation in 1860 unearthed cavities formed by the bodies of residents trapped within the lava, their burned voids fossilized by the hardened ash. Plaster casts from the cavities reproduced the population of Pompeii, but no longer as an organized citizenry. In the face of apocalypse, the might of Romanum imperium would fall away into a frenzy of crawling children, gnarled dogs and clinging lives鈥攏o more than passing, pathetic bodies after all.
The phantom of the buried city is invoked throughout Los Angeles-based artist Jonathan Pylypchuk鈥檚 recent exhibition at China Art Objects, in the uncanny convergence of apocalyptic landscapes and banal lives, a final teenage 鈥渇uck off鈥� before the end of the world.
Pylypchuk was born and raised in Winnipeg, where he was an original member of the city鈥檚 celebrated collective, the Royal Art Lodge. Though his paintings, collages and sculptures retain some of the wintry enchantment associated with the Lodge, they belong predominately to the lineage of Georges Bataille-ian abjection that found expression in the late 1980s and 鈥�90s with seminal 鈥渁bject鈥� (and fellow la) artists like Mike Kelley. Yet where Kelley approached his abject bodies with the calculated distance of a Freudian with his test subjects, Pylypchuk enters the protocols of abjection from within. His characters鈥攚ide-eyed animal people, stick figures and sometimes distressed clouds, all cobbled from combinations of twigs and paper, fake fur and old clothes鈥攆orge some kind of meager existence amid an indifferent world. He continues to develop this world here with a series of large multimedia paintings and two cast metal sculptures.
The scrappiness of the pieces provides the context for abjection, but the real pathos comes from the relationships they depict. Disillusion is implicit in illusion; Pylypchuk suggests that the faith that can conjure a human form from a t-shirt scrap also endows that being with the capacity for betrayal. His compositions are fraught with the implosive tension of a situation perpetually on the brink of collapse, psychically as much as materially. Much of the tension lies in the awkward intimacy of the scenes. In 鈥淟ake of Fire鈥� (2008), a meteoric swirl of neon orange and earthy brown looms behind two tiny figures in the foreground, with patchwork bodies and tufts of fake, furry hair. 鈥淒on鈥檛 go around cursing people鈥� (2008) shows three figures in a similar situation; in paper text bubbles, one states, 鈥測ou can鈥檛 go around cursing people鈥� while the others respond with 鈥渨ell you sir are in fact cursed as well鈥� and the dismal 鈥渞emember me for having lived an honorable life, sweet world.鈥� In both works, the figures seem to struggle with their sense of inadequacy by thrusting it upon one another in a crosscheck of demoralization.
The emotional charge of the exchange is reiterated in the intensity of the painted surface. The soft, sheer colors that stained the wood-grain skies of Pylypchuk鈥檚 earlier works have given way to churning reds, oranges, purples and greens encrusted with coarse, multicolored splotches鈥攍ike the sediment on an ocean floor, or society鈥檚 unassimilable debris. If Pylypchuk owes any debt to Abstract Expressionism, or what Harold Rosenberg in a 1952 Art News article famously called 鈥渁pocalyptic wallpaper,鈥� it鈥檚 via the supernatural hells of Hieronymus Bosch. Against an atmosphere that seems to bow under its own pressure, the figures bare their emotional wounds; they argue, they suffer, they piss and moan, impervious to the devastation all around.
The epic classicism that begins to emerge in the paintings culminates in the two sculptures (both 鈥淯ntitled,鈥� 2008). This is Pylypchuk鈥檚 first foray into casting. His previous sculptures were almost urgently makeshift, as if their essence relied on their impermanence. Here, the characters are no longer subordinated to the materiality of their bodies; instead, they bear the crushing weight of immortality. In the smaller of the two pieces, a slight, cat-headed character with spindly outstretched arms and wooden legs stands at attention on a pedestal twice his height. The monumental larger sculpture features two life-sized figures with long, gangly limbs and elephant heads duking it out in the center of one of the gallery spaces. The sock legs and patchwork bodies of the model from which the sculpture was cast are still perceptible in the imprint of creased fabric, but the leaden mass of the metal forms鈥攅ars flopping, trunks and tusks ramming鈥攄rags the fight to a dead, lumbering stop. The image of time, to use Gilles Deleuze鈥檚 phrase, that is played out in Pylypchuk鈥檚 paper and wood, is subsumed in the space of an eternal monument, like the carbon imprint from an atomic blast or the cast of a body incinerated in a flash of volcanic debris.
Pylypchuk鈥檚 world materializes the slippage between childhood imagination and adult relations, the same indistinct space that allows fiction to flow into life. The problem is that life makes a distinction; we make use of fiction by sublimating it into metaphor, not by residing in it. As reflections of human beings, Pylypchuk鈥檚 characters assume the comic burden of man鈥檚 own follies鈥攖hey take the fall. His profound skill is his capacity to assert them as something other than reflections, to recognize the essential equivalence between a matchstick and a body, or between an elephant brawl and the human condition. As one character says to another in a 2004 collage, 鈥淪ucks to be you.鈥� Evidently, it鈥檚 all the same when the ashes cave in.
The phantom of the buried city is invoked throughout Los Angeles-based artist Jonathan Pylypchuk鈥檚 recent exhibition at China Art Objects, in the uncanny convergence of apocalyptic landscapes and banal lives, a final teenage 鈥渇uck off鈥� before the end of the world.
Pylypchuk was born and raised in Winnipeg, where he was an original member of the city鈥檚 celebrated collective, the Royal Art Lodge. Though his paintings, collages and sculptures retain some of the wintry enchantment associated with the Lodge, they belong predominately to the lineage of Georges Bataille-ian abjection that found expression in the late 1980s and 鈥�90s with seminal 鈥渁bject鈥� (and fellow la) artists like Mike Kelley. Yet where Kelley approached his abject bodies with the calculated distance of a Freudian with his test subjects, Pylypchuk enters the protocols of abjection from within. His characters鈥攚ide-eyed animal people, stick figures and sometimes distressed clouds, all cobbled from combinations of twigs and paper, fake fur and old clothes鈥攆orge some kind of meager existence amid an indifferent world. He continues to develop this world here with a series of large multimedia paintings and two cast metal sculptures.
The scrappiness of the pieces provides the context for abjection, but the real pathos comes from the relationships they depict. Disillusion is implicit in illusion; Pylypchuk suggests that the faith that can conjure a human form from a t-shirt scrap also endows that being with the capacity for betrayal. His compositions are fraught with the implosive tension of a situation perpetually on the brink of collapse, psychically as much as materially. Much of the tension lies in the awkward intimacy of the scenes. In 鈥淟ake of Fire鈥� (2008), a meteoric swirl of neon orange and earthy brown looms behind two tiny figures in the foreground, with patchwork bodies and tufts of fake, furry hair. 鈥淒on鈥檛 go around cursing people鈥� (2008) shows three figures in a similar situation; in paper text bubbles, one states, 鈥測ou can鈥檛 go around cursing people鈥� while the others respond with 鈥渨ell you sir are in fact cursed as well鈥� and the dismal 鈥渞emember me for having lived an honorable life, sweet world.鈥� In both works, the figures seem to struggle with their sense of inadequacy by thrusting it upon one another in a crosscheck of demoralization.
The emotional charge of the exchange is reiterated in the intensity of the painted surface. The soft, sheer colors that stained the wood-grain skies of Pylypchuk鈥檚 earlier works have given way to churning reds, oranges, purples and greens encrusted with coarse, multicolored splotches鈥攍ike the sediment on an ocean floor, or society鈥檚 unassimilable debris. If Pylypchuk owes any debt to Abstract Expressionism, or what Harold Rosenberg in a 1952 Art News article famously called 鈥渁pocalyptic wallpaper,鈥� it鈥檚 via the supernatural hells of Hieronymus Bosch. Against an atmosphere that seems to bow under its own pressure, the figures bare their emotional wounds; they argue, they suffer, they piss and moan, impervious to the devastation all around.
The epic classicism that begins to emerge in the paintings culminates in the two sculptures (both 鈥淯ntitled,鈥� 2008). This is Pylypchuk鈥檚 first foray into casting. His previous sculptures were almost urgently makeshift, as if their essence relied on their impermanence. Here, the characters are no longer subordinated to the materiality of their bodies; instead, they bear the crushing weight of immortality. In the smaller of the two pieces, a slight, cat-headed character with spindly outstretched arms and wooden legs stands at attention on a pedestal twice his height. The monumental larger sculpture features two life-sized figures with long, gangly limbs and elephant heads duking it out in the center of one of the gallery spaces. The sock legs and patchwork bodies of the model from which the sculpture was cast are still perceptible in the imprint of creased fabric, but the leaden mass of the metal forms鈥攅ars flopping, trunks and tusks ramming鈥攄rags the fight to a dead, lumbering stop. The image of time, to use Gilles Deleuze鈥檚 phrase, that is played out in Pylypchuk鈥檚 paper and wood, is subsumed in the space of an eternal monument, like the carbon imprint from an atomic blast or the cast of a body incinerated in a flash of volcanic debris.
Pylypchuk鈥檚 world materializes the slippage between childhood imagination and adult relations, the same indistinct space that allows fiction to flow into life. The problem is that life makes a distinction; we make use of fiction by sublimating it into metaphor, not by residing in it. As reflections of human beings, Pylypchuk鈥檚 characters assume the comic burden of man鈥檚 own follies鈥攖hey take the fall. His profound skill is his capacity to assert them as something other than reflections, to recognize the essential equivalence between a matchstick and a body, or between an elephant brawl and the human condition. As one character says to another in a 2004 collage, 鈥淪ucks to be you.鈥� Evidently, it鈥檚 all the same when the ashes cave in.
Installation view of Jonathan Pylypchuk at China Art Objects Galleries, Los Angeles, CA. Image courtesy of the artist and China Art Objects Galleries. Photo: JW Pictures, Joshua White