VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

Jon Pylypchuk will premiere at Blaffer Gallery, the artist's first major solo exhibition in a U.S. museum. Pylypchuk’s exhibition will include sculptures, paintings, and drawings that draw upon the animal world to explore the frailty of human existence and social relationships. The show will be on view in the downstairs galleries September 12 through November 14, 2009. A free opening reception is scheduled for September 11 from 6 until 8 p.m.

Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston, is extending the run of its fall exhibitions, Josephine Meckseper and Jon Pylypchuk, through Feb. 6, 2010.

Pylypchuk’s work creates heart-wrenching stories of attraction and repulsion, love and loss, pleasure and pain, triumph and failure. The exhibition at Blaffer, curated by director and chief curator Claudia Schmuckli, will include around 10 sculptures, 20 paintings, and 60 drawings created since 2000, as well as a new installation conceived for this debut.

“Endowed with human attributes, yet endearing in their furry cuteness, Pylypchuk’s animals inspire empathy,” explained Schmuckli. “Their experiences and struggles speak to the pathetic banality, stubborn determination and relentless optimism that define many of our paths through life, that unfolding tragicomedy of epic proportion.”

The catalogue for Jon Pylypchuk, co-published with the Center for Contemporary Art in Münster, Germany (AZKM - Ausstellungshalle zeitgenössische Kunst Münster) will feature essays by Schmuckli and Gail Fitzpatrick, director of the AZKM. The book will include work shown in both Houston and Münster, providing a transatlantic, comprehensive, and in-depth look at this artist’s oeuvre.

About the Artist:
Jon Pylypchuk was born in 1972 in Winnipeg, Canada, and received his Master of Fine Arts degree in 2001 from the University of California, Los Angeles. He splits his time between Winnipeg and Los Angeles. His work has been featured in the exhibitions USA Today at the Royal Academy of Arts, London; Meditations in an Emergency at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit; Snapshot: New Art from Los Angeles, at the UCLA Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami; and Circles at the Center for Art and Media Technology (ZKM - Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie) in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Jon Pylypchuk is organized by Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston. The exhibition and publication are made possible, in part, by The Cecil Amelia Blaffer von Furstenberg Endowment for Exhibitions and Programs and Houston Endowment Inc.

September 12 – November 14, 2009
Opening Reception: September 11, 6 – 8 p.m.

Guest Lecture, “The Junkman Cometh: Jon Pylypchuk and the Saving Art of Impoverishment”
Professor Robert Enright, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada
September 23, 6:30 p.m.

Also on view at Blaffer Gallery, an exhibition by artist Josephine Meckseper.

Pictured:  Jon Pylypchuk, detail of  you are going to feel like shit tomorrow / i feel like shit right now, 2005, Mixed media on paper, 14 1/8 x 14 inches, Collection of Andrea Teschke, New York.