Josse Pyl

Josse Pyl (1991, St-Niklaas, Belgium) lives and works in Amsterdam. Pyl's spatial language investigates the intuition that lies behind our perception of the world. Our understanding of reality is closely linked to the symbols and images that we make, but the silences and unspoken symbols also form our reality. His works show the construction behind visible signs as well as the invisible sounds that connect one person with another. The drawings and objects can be considered as characters or symbols that are part of a story unfolding gradually in the exhibition space. A physical grammar that forms a separate linguistic world, permeated with its own dreamlike logic that ensures that the familiar forms of communication are made tangible and alienated.

Line drawings form the basis of Pyl's wall drawings as a background to thinking, rather than an observational investigation. While drawing, Pyl analyzes how lines take shape on the paper to investigate how the thoughts, once depicted, are both visual and linguistic. The series of wall work makes visible every point in the drawings where a decision has taken place; the point at which a line and thought starts, bends or ends is connected to a number. These electronic sculptures, which function as typewriters, are approached as spatial poems: machines that show references to intercoms, already unobtrusively present in spaces, inviting the viewer to read numbers in their writing.

Pyl studied at Kask School of Arts, Ghent (BA and MA), and Werkplaats Typografie, Arnhem (MA), before completing a residency at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam (2014–2016). He is a lecturer on the Master Programme at Sandberg Institute and at the Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent.

Solo exhibitions include CA NTS EE MY TO NGU E, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2022); O and H, B, R and S, Plato Ostrava, Prague (2021); Too Many Thoughts, Too Little Teeth, Design Museum Gent, Ghent (2021); Prospects, Art Rotterdam, Rotterdam (2020); I Think and I've Thought a Thought, Bakery, Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam (2019); Long In the Tooth, Brakke Grond, Amsterdam (2019); Can't Hear My Mind, 019, Ghent (2018); Rijksakademie Open, Amsterdam (2018); and Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana (2017).

Group exhibitions include Gifted Eye, Teylers Museum, Haarlem (2023); Typojanchi Biennale, Seoul (2022); Little Precious Things, Georg Kargl Fine Arts, Vienna (2022); ALPHABETUM, West Den Haag, The Hague (2019); Biennale van België, Ghent (2018); Even if it's Jazz or the Quiet Storm, NEST, The Hague (2018); Signals from the Periphery, Tallinn Art Hall, Tallinn (2017); and Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana (2017).