David Czupryn

David Czupryn (born 1983 in Duisburg) is an artist who lives and works in Düsseldorf. Czupryn’s work is informed by an exploration of the uncanny and the clash between natural and man-made materials. In 2016, he won the 70th International Bergische Art Prize, which seeks to award emergent artists who have distinguished themselves both internationally and regionally. Since 2015, he has started a close collaboration with ARTUNER.

Czupryn obtained a BFA under Georg Herold (2011), a Meisterbrief under Lucy McKenzie (2011-2013), and an MFA under Tomma Abts (2015), all from Düsseldorf Kunstakademie.

Die mit der Liebe spielen, Palazzo Guaineri delle Cossere, A+B Gallery, Brescia, 2014

Stealth and Days, Maschinenhaus Essen, Essen, 2015

Imagine (Group Show curated by Tomma Abts and Alastair MacKinven), Londondonewcastle Projectspace, London, 2015

Figure of Speech, ARTUNER at Cassina Projects, New York, 2016

So I turned myself to face me: David Czupryn, Tony Matelli, Charlie Roberts, Jackie Saccoccio, Marlborough Contemporary Gallery, 2016

He She It (solo), Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Darmstadt (Germany), 2018

The World's Your Oyster, ARTUNER at Palazzo Capris, Turin, Italy, 2018

Czupryn’s work is dedicated to the exploration of the uncanny, a feeling that was analysed by Sigmund Freud in his seminal essay ‘The Uncanny’(1919). Arising from a mixture of horror and familiarity, mostly common in dreams, Freud referred to it as “something long known to us, once very familiar” but, at the same time, “that ought to have remained […] hidden and secret and has become visible”. In Czupryn's work, the uncanny takes the form of humanoid hybrids, which are made of materials that resemble naturalistic patterns and man-made polymers. Although the details of Czupryn’s paintings are hyper-realistic, the overall image is surrealistic, evoking the atmosphere of dreams and imagination. The characters of his paintings’ narrative, usually inspired by acquaintances of the artist, are transformed into machine-like figures whose body is fragmented in independent sections made of natural and artificial elements. In his hypersensitivity to the deconstruction of bodies, and to how bodily parts form a consistent whole, Czupryn’s paintings are reminiscent of Samuel Beckett literary enquiry. The difference between the two, however, lies in the fact that for Beckett the dissection of bodies is a way to represent or allude to death, while for Czupryn, it is an attempt to confer a sense of life to the inanimate subjects of his paintings. Although Salvador Dalí and Giorgio De Chirico are important reference points for Czupryn, his main sources of inspiration are the photographer Diane Arbus and American artist Matthew Barney.

Do Boomerangs Always Come Back, Kasteel d’Aspremont-Lynden (Belgium), 2016