David Czypryn
He She It
October 28, 2018 – January 6, 2019
Kunsthalle Darmstadt
Steubenpl. 1
64293 Darmstadt
He She It
October 28, 2018 – January 6, 2019
Kunsthalle Darmstadt
Steubenpl. 1
64293 Darmstadt
Images courtesy 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.