Stephan Dybus

Stephan Dybus works across acrylic painting, watercolour, plasticine sculpture and 3D, building his work around simplified, easily recognisable characters. On the surface the work is light and funny; underneath sits a steady current of existential dread. His small figures act out failure, self-doubt, relationships and the pressures of self-image and self-optimisation, turning everyday awkwardness and inadequacy into deadpan comedy. Process and persistence matter as much as the finished piece. Dybus has painted one picture a day for a year, and through Steven, a fictional painter he invented, he has made gestural black oil-stick paintings on site in the gallery and documented their making on video, so that the object, its online record and the persona behind it depend on each other.