Andrew Hunczak uses found and recycled material to portray vaguely discernible domestic items which allude to his experiences with anticipation and anxiety. Hunczak’s frenetic windows, houses, calendars, and rocking horses coexist with his sewn abstractions, blurring the line between the familiar and the unknown. Hunczak’s work contemplates and deconstructs time, material, and emotion. We got the chance to visit the artist’s studio in Brooklyn and ask him a few questions about his work.

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Impermanent Gallery: You’ve spent the last few years in LA, NY, and Cleveland. How has each city affected your work differently? Do you feel more inspired in one city over another?

Andrew Hunczak: I feel at my best in any city that moves fast. Cleveland was kind of tough to make work in because the pace is slow. I’ve definitely been feeling good here, but really any industrial area works for me. I’ve been in this studio for about a month now. Some of the best work I've made was in Downey, CA.

Impermanent: Did your work always look like this?

Hunczak: Kind of. I would always use the scraps of canvases and sew them together to create a full surface since canvas is expensive. And I was like “oh this really works.” It also breaks my pieces down into segments which makes them easier to navigate through.

Impermanent: Where do your fabrics come from?

Hunczak: They are actually all old paintings that I decided weren’t very good. So a lot of my stuff gets taken apart- I cut and tear them into segments that I think will make sense. It’s a process of constantly re-homing these moments that have been created until they can live nicely together. The bedding I use is all my old bedding.

Impermanent: There's such an interesting dynamic between the materials you decide to use.

Hunczak: Yeah, like I’ve also been doing these works with sewn together pillowcases for a while. It’s a material that you can make a really nice contrast with by starting with a soft textile that comes from an object we use for comfort, then working in rougher materials and marks to rob it of those qualities.

Impermanent: Where do your choices of color come from? Your palette is clearly very refined.

Hunczak: I have a lot of respect for artists that use very bright, deep, colors, but I don’t like it in my own work. I’m mainly interested in reds because of their violence. But recently, I've been trying to reduce my work to fewer colors- almost just using white, unbleached titanium, black from charcoal and pencils. Really anything neutral.

Impermanent: Tell me about your rocking horses.

Hunczak: Man, every time I’m asked that question I feel like my answer changes. I was living in this illegal warehouse in 2020 in the warehouse district in LA and had so much scrap wood all around the building. It has always been a symbol in my childhood and it’s an extended physicality of what I do with my canvases- trying to rush to build a structure as fast as possible. I am trying to get my time down. My last one took me two and a half hours and I think I can go even faster. I really love building them and do not think I will ever stop, I want to have a show with 50-100 of them all lined up.

Impermanent: What artists would you say are your biggest influences?

Hunczak: Gordon Matta Clark with his anarchitecture. He’s really great. I also love the work of Richard Prince, Antoni Tapies, and Anselm Kiefer very much.

Impermanent: Can you tell me more about your process?

Hunczak: Actually constructing and sewing the piece requires so much physical exertion and a lot of mental thought processing. By the time I’m done, if I've created a good composition it should only need extremely minimal marks with oil. It's difficult to tell, though, until it's stretched. Even when I dislike what I am looking at after I am done sewing, it's also exciting to solve the problem that I have created for myself.

Impermanent: So most of your job is at the sewing machine?

Hunczak: Yeah, I actually should refer to them as quilt paintings because that’s really what they are. As the pieces get larger it becomes more difficult to sew and gets really physical. almost like a wrestling match. Physicality is extremely important to me, though. Without that, I really don’t know what my practice would be.

Impermanent: How has it been navigating this space as an emerging artist?

Hunczak: It’s difficult, of course. I feel really good though. I have a good community of people around me, and I feel very fortunate to be around the people that I am around. So much talent, it’s very exciting.

Impermanent: I saw that you were featured at a Basketcase Gallery popup. How did that relationship come about?

Hunczak: Zach from Basketcase is the homie. I’ve loved his clothes for a while and we connected. He’s just a great guy who I respect very much.

Impermanent: I can’t forget to ask about your crocs. What makes them the shoe of choice?

Hunczak: I forgot to bring them today. I wear them every day but it’s been cold and I’m super bummed I don’t have them on. They’re comfortable, lightweight, cheap, and have good airflow. Airflow is the major perk.

Impermanent: Any giblets?

Hunczak: I do have one giblet. The giblet is a white croc and I have it in my pair of white crocs. They’re my fancy crocs.

Impermanent: How long do you spend on a piece?

Hunczak: It depends. Recently I’ve been feeling great energy so I’ve been constructing a lot of these. Sometimes I can complete one a day, sometimes it’s three a month. It depends on the piece and how much paint ends up on it, which is ultimately decided by how many problems need to be solved.

Impermanent: So when you’re in the studio you’re working pretty quickly, though.

Hunczak: Yeah, I feel like there needs to be a quickness to everything. And if there wasn’t, then this just wouldn’t work for me.

Impermanent: How do you know when a piece is finished?

Hunczak: The best way that I have heard it put is that you don’t finish a piece, you surrender to it. I think that’s a pretty accurate description of how I feel. When you can’t do anything else.