“It's not you, it’s me, I will always love you dear”

January 07, 2013

It's not you, it's me, I will always love you dear at the entrance of Barker Hangar

At night: It's not you, it's me, I will always you dear

A new installation by artist Jon Pylypchuk titled “It’s not you, it’s me, I will always love you dear”. The installation consists of a disgruntled cast of characters with bodies constructed and painted to resemble discarded cigarettes endowed with human attributes of wooden arms and legs. Some have been equipped with picket signs bearing a range of messages from ad hominem attacks to libertarian slogans to new age mantras and zen koans. With the sculptures standing between six to nine feet tall and arranged into small groups, the space becomes the site of a cartoonish political rally.

“By mid-morning, I have a pile of cigarette butts lining my floor and I think holy shit i got a lot done. Each butt is like a person who lives their full life starting off with great promise doing what they are meant to do, and finally resting crushed out and useless. I have a friend who use to take those butts extract the remaining tobacco and roll butt smokes because he was so poor. the cherry at the end of the butt smoke was a faint ember of life when things were desperate.”

Jonathan Pylypchuk’s work includes sculptures, paintings and drawings. His work has been featured at Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland, Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit, the UCLA Hammer Museum, the ZKM Museum in Germany, the Royal Academy in London, the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg, and the Musee d’Arte Contemporaine, Montreal. His work is in public collections such as Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Pylypchuk is represented by participating galleries International Art Object Galleries, Fredric Snitzer Gallery and Galerie Hussenot.