Artist: David Czupryn
Exhibition title: He She It
Venue: Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany
Date: October 28, 2018 – January 6, 2019
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Kunsthalle Darmstadt
After presenting Florian Süssmayr’s Bilder für Deutsche Museen II in 2016, the Kunsthalle Darmstadt, under the direction of León Krempel, is once again featuring a painter in a solo exhibition: David Czupryn.
[…] One preeminent characteristic of David Czupryn is his use of the trompe-l’oeil, the technique of visual deception known to painting from time immemorial and now celebrating an unexpected comeback. In a downright provocative manner, brush and paint simply depict surfaces, so that handwriting and gesture are negated as the principal emblems of painting. This gives the impression that the artist’s pictures have been cast as a single element, so that they appear sculptural and not photo-realistic. Their space is shallow, box-like, enclosed by walls.
Czupryn’s consistently large-format paintings evince a well-planned organization and meticulous equilibrium through translucent, layered colors; harmonious contrasts; quiet backgrounds and bases; motifs of movement enhanced by arrows or far-reaching limbs; broken symmetries; falling and weightless aspects; linked, intertwined, opened and transparent elements; pictures within the picture; and arrangements resembling still lifes. […]
Enigma also surrounds the many various objects out of which the artist’s painted installations are composed. They are based on photographic models from his collection. These often include interpretations of works of art. Thus in He She It (2017), David Czupryn integrated a Head by Naum Gabo, a Folding Sculpture by Lygia Clark and a Corner Counter-Relief by Vladimir Tatlin. Are allusions such as these a matter of hieroglyphs with concealed meaning, art-historical cross-references, tributes to esteemed artists or decorative accessories?
The Kunsthalle Darmstadt is proud of the opportunity to present, with a selection of some twenty-five paintings done between 2014 and 2018, the first comprehensive overview of the creative output by an artist who knows how to entice painting out of its reticence and to transform it into a visual drama in dialogue with all the arts, not only with sculpture. […]
Also on display in addition to paintings will be several works on paper which David Czupryn produces casually day after day and then combines into series. They bear witness to his interest in the portrait and the tronie (a work with striking facial features). Proceeding from broad art-historical sources but also from facial composites done for police investigations, he designs grotesques that lay claim to a place between Arcimboldo and Thomas Schütte.
David Czupryn, He She It, 2018, exhibition view, Kunsthalle Darmstadt
David Czupryn, He She It, 2018, exhibition view, Kunsthalle Darmstadt
David Czupryn, He She It, 2018, exhibition view, Kunsthalle Darmstadt
David Czupryn, He She It, 2018, exhibition view, Kunsthalle Darmstadt
David Czupryn, He She It, 2018, exhibition view, Kunsthalle Darmstadt
David Czupryn, He She It, 2018, exhibition view, Kunsthalle Darmstadt
David Czupryn, He She It, 2018, exhibition view, Kunsthalle Darmstadt
David Czupryn, He She It, 2018, exhibition view, Kunsthalle Darmstadt
David Czupryn, He She It, 2018, exhibition view, Kunsthalle Darmstadt
David Czupryn, hedonize my ass, 2018, Oil on canvas, 300 x 440 cm, 118 1/8 x 173 ¼ inch
David Czupryn, baton blows, 2018, Oil on canvas, 260 x 360 cm, 102 3/8 x 141 ¾ inch
David Czupryn, raw plastic parasites, 2018, Oil on canvas, 270 x 240 cm, 106 5/16 x94 ½ inch
David Czupryn, not born in the same nursery, 2015, Oil on canvas, 280 x 240 cm, 110 ¼ x 94 ½ inch
David Czupryn, silent butler, 2018, Oil on canvas, 250 x 180 cm, 98 7/16 x 70 7/8 inch
David Czupryn, crisis turns into reality show, 2018, Oil on canvas, 250 x 210 cm, 98 7/16 x 82 11/16 inch
David Czupryn, both at once, 2016, Oil on canvas, 250 x 180 cm, 98 7/16 x 70 7/8 inch
David Czupryn, alternative lifeforms, 2018, Oil on canvas, 280 x 480 cm, 110 ¼ x 189 inch
David Czupryn, pale neon plastics, 2015, Oil on canvas, 210 x 195 cm, 82 11/16 x 76 ¾ inch
David Czupryn, well triggered lifeorms, 2017, Oil on canvas, 180 x 130 cm, 70 7/8 x 51 3/16 inch
David Czupryn, club full of poison, 2016, Oil on canvas, 190 x 130 cm, 74 13/16 x 51 ¾ inch
David Czupryn, defendig a dream, no date, Oil on canvas, 210 x 200 cm
David Czupryn, pseudo doppelgänger, 2018, Oil on canvas, 190 x 150 cm, 78 ¾ x 59 1/16 inch
David Czupryn, pseudo twins, 2016, Oil on canvas, 190 x 150 cm, 78 ¾ x 59 1/16 inch
David Czupryn, He She It, 2017, Oil on canvas, 180 x 150 cm, 70 7/8 x 59 1/16 inch
David Czupryn, soul full of poison, 2016, Oil on canvas, 180 x 130 cm, 70 7/8 x 51 3/16 inch
David Czupryn, figure of speech, 2014, Oil on canvas, 165 x 130 cm, 64 15/16 x 51 3/16 inch