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George Byrne is meeting us on the corner between poetic formalism and arbitrary utility. You drove past here just yesterday but you missed the show. The cleaving cut by light. The story written in color bleached by a distracted sun. The nothing much place. But this is actually an excavation of antique pleasures. The austerity of composition and the tenderness of surface in Byrne s photographs owes obvious debt to more recent minimal colorists such as Matisse and Kelly but he s also talking to the 18th century. When Thomas Jones painted A Wall in Naples in 1782, the sky was also a flattened ribbon and the sunlight sculpted form into its abstract core entity. Kelly rarely painted the scene and radically and beautifully, he went off frame in search of stained and stateless things. Lyric symmetry dwells in exactly these peripheries. That place that everyone seems to have just left to the forces of decay. And in that vacuum the eye steps back in. That witness to the unwatched moments. The impulse to carve composure from broken architecture and intimacy from faceless walls is older than Modernism. It s actually as old as light. Byrne came to Los Angeles with a raw lens. The latitude is similar to Australia but the light is finer, it sugars the face of plaster and tin and it slices and arcs such distinct geometries. When Byrne lists his colors, he also names his materials, the cheap and hard materials of industry, utility and the Latino diaspora: The bright yellow stucco of drug stores throughout Southern California. The beautiful molded concrete shapes of urban footpaths. The fire engine red strips along all the pavements across LA. The canary yellow bollards that punctuate everything everywhere. The pink and blue awnings. The rich blue black shadows that drift cat and mouse across all the surfaces all day. There is no order to it. It is restructured by the painter, the writer or the photographer. It is coming back to nowhere with something in your hands. - Anna Johnson PAGE 1
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BIOGRAPHY George Byrne s series resonates with a quiet, deductive intensity. Borrowing from the clean, vivid clarity of modernist painting, he also references the New Topographics photography movement via a subject matter firmly entrenched in the urban everyday. Byrne s oeuvre is to spin banal urban scenes into seismic moments. He seeks the subliminal and sublime in the everyday. Born in Sydney in 1976, Byrne graduated from Sydney College Of The Arts in 2001, travelled extensively, and then settled in Los Angeles in 2010 where he has been focusing on his photographic practice. For the series, I was looking to take this idea of reclassifying ordinary urban spaces and distil it further by focusing more on the colors and surfaces themselves. When it comes to photography, if you choose to you stop utilizing depth, you are basically left with flat shapes, color and texture much like a Matisse cut-out - in employing this approach I found I had more freedom with composition. It allowed me to look at and combine elements in a more expressive way. While the images remain portraits of the city, they also become more abstract in their intention - based on a true story but open to interpretation. George Byrne 2016. PAGE 3
P H O T O B Y: J U L I E N R O U B I N E T PAG E 4
PRESS PLATES WATCH THE VIDEO VIDEO PAGE 5
1. BLUE AWNING WITH PINK 55.5 X 68.5 INCHES UNFRAMED: $5000.00 FRAMED: $6000 27.5 X 33.75 UNFRAMED: $1650.00 FRAMED: $2150.00
2. CORNER COMPOSITION PALM SPRINGS 47.5 X 58.75 INCHES UNFRAMED: $4400.00 FRAMED: $5200.00 27.5 X 33.75 UNFRAMED: $1650.00 FRAMED: $2150.00.00
3. ECHO PARK 41.5 X 41.75 INCHES UNFRAMED: $3300.00 FRAMED: $3950.00 24 X 24.25 INCHES UNFRAMED: $1200.00 FRAMED: $1600.00
4., HOLLYWOOD BLVD. 41.5 X 41.75 INCHES UNFRAMED: $3300.00 FRAMED: $3950.00 24 X 24.25 INCHES UNFRAMED: $1200.00 FRAMED: $1600.00
5. GREEN SUN WITH YELLOW 41.5 X 41.75 INCHES UNFRAMED: $3300.00 FRAMED: $3950.00 24 X 24.25 INCHES UNFRAMED: $1200.00 FRAMED: $1600.00
6. ZANKOU CHICKEN 41.5 X 41.75 INCHES UNFRAMED: $3300.00 FRAMED: $3950.00 24 X 24.25 INCHES UNFRAMED: $1200.00 FRAMED: $1600.00
7. PEACH WALL WITH PURPLE 47.5 X 58.75 INCHES UNFRAMED: $4400.00 FRAMED: $5200.00 27.5 X 33.75 UNFRAMED: $1650.00 FRAMED: $2150.00 NEW COLOR ORDER FIELD
8. BLUE AWNING WITH YELLOW 47.5 X 58.75 INCHES UNFRAMED: $4400.00 FRAMED: $5200.00 27.5 X 33.75 UNFRAMED: $1650.00 FRAMED: $2150.00
9. BOB MARLEY 41.5 X 41.75 INCHES UNFRAMED: $3300.00 FRAMED: $3950.00 24 X 24.25 INCHES UNFRAMED: $1200.00 FRAMED: $1600.00
10. LOS FELIZ #1 41.5 X 41.75 INCHES UNFRAMED: $3300.00 FRAMED: $3950.00 24 X 24.25 INCHES UNFRAMED: $1200.00 FRAMED: $1600.00
11. GREEN CIERA 47.5 X 58.75 INCHES UNFRAMED: $4400.00 FRAMED: $5200.00 27.5 X 33.75 UNFRAMED: $1650.00 FRAMED: $2150.00
12. HOLLYWOOD TOYOTA 47.5 X 58.75 INCHES UNFRAMED: $4400.00 FRAMED: $5200.00 27.5 X 33.75 UNFRAMED: $1650.00 FRAMED: $2150.00
13. WHITE BILLBOARD 41.5 X 41.75 INCHES UNFRAMED: $3300.00 FRAMED: $3950.00 24 X 24.25 INCHES UNFRAMED: $1200.00 FRAMED: $1600.00
14. WASHINGTON BLVD. 41.5 X 41.75 INCHES UNFRAMED: $3300.00 FRAMED: $3950.00 24 X 24.25 INCHES UNFRAMED: $1200.00 FRAMED: $1600.00
15. BUS STATION CHINATOWN 57.5 X 47.75 INCHES UNFRAMED: $4400.00 FRAMED: $5200.00 27.5 X 33.75 UNFRAMED: $1650.00 FRAMED: $2150.00
OVERVIEW BLUE AWNING WITH PINK CORNER COMPOSITION ECHO PARK, HOLLYWOOD PALM SPRINGS BLVD. GREEN SUN WITH YELLOW ZANKOU CHICKEN PEACH WALL WITH PURPLE BLUE AWNING WITH YELLOW BOB MARLEY LOS FELIZ #1 GREEN CIERA HOLLYWOOD TOYOTA WHITE BILLBOARD WASHINGTON BLVD. BUS STATION CHINATOWN
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CV BORN 1976, SYDNEY EDUCATION Bachelor of Arts Sydney University 1996-1998 Bachelor of Visual Arts Sydney College of the Arts 1998-2000 SOLO EXHIBITIONS PUBLICATIONS Color Field Olsen Gallery, Sydney JUNE 2017 Color Field Halcyon House Residency, Halcyon House MAY 2017 Soho House Artist In Residence, Los Angeles DECEMBER 2016 Local Division Olsen Irwin Gallery, Sydney FEBRUARY 2016 Urban Studies Contact Photo Lab, Los Angeles AUGUST 2015 Instant (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane) JUNE 2014 Insta LA Hemingway and Picket, Los Angeles SEPTEMBER 2013 GROUP EXHIBITIONS WINNER Head On NSW Landscape Prize MAY 2017 FINALIST Focus Photo LA 2016 FINALIST Head On Photo Awards 2015 FINALIST Head On Photo Awards 2014 FINALIST Head On Photo Awards 2012 FINALIST Head On Photo Awards 2010 WINNER Lavazza Travelling Scholarship Sydney 2002 RUNNER UP The Australian Young Photographer of the Year Award 2001 RUNNER UP Image Magazine Student Competition 1999 RUNNER UP Sydney Morning Herald Jeffrey Smart 'Moments' Competition MARCH 1998 British Journal Of Photography Paper Sea LA Canvas Monster Children Focus Magazine Assemble Papers Vogue (USA/AUS) LA Where Guestbook The MANIFESTO NO Magazine Harpers Bazaar (USA) Manifesto Magazine (Australia) if MAGAZINE Oyster Magazine REMNANTS IMAGE Magazine PAGE 23 23
CONTACT SYDNEY NEW YORK LOS ANGELES Olsen Gallery Olsen Gruin NYC Werkartz Studios 63 Jersey Road Woollahra 2025 PHONE +61 2 9327 3922 EMAIL info@olsengallery.com WEB olsengallery.com 30 Orchard St, New York, NY 10002 PHONE +1 646 525 6213 EMAIL info@olsengruin.com WEB www.olsengruin.com/ 1667 Main St Los Angeles 90012 PHONE +1 646 309 3798 EMAIL contact@georgebyrne.com WEB georgebyrne.com FOLLOW @george_byrne PAGE 24