Jason Alexander Byers “Love Birds”
Garis & Hahn
[Image: Jason Alexander Byers "Magnetize" (2015) tar on paper 30 x 22 in.]
This event has ended.
Garis & Hahn is pleased to announce Jason Alexander Byers’ first solo show in New York, Love Birds.
This series was first inspired by the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill off the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Byers had been working with tar for years, first in sculpture and then on paper to depict skyscrapers and churches. In the wake of this tragedy, Byers started working with this unique medium to depict the most common victims of oil spills - birds. This series created in response to a tragedy explores themes of life, love and loss.
Jason Alexander Byers’ signature tar-painting technique involves tracing the positive and
negative space of birds in motion using tar on paper. This work conjures up all the implicit
menace of a Rorschach inkblot. These paintings of birds remain open to the viewer’s
projections: they can resemble hybrid creatures and topographical maps. The birds’ eyes are
empty circles, echoing the centers of the target paintings that the artist has become well-known
for.
Byers’ fascination with birds stems in large part from their structural beauty, dynamism and fragility. His previous art projects include images of targets, multiples of tanks, bombers and fighter jets crafted with Sensodyne toothpaste, whose soft pinks and greens muted the destructive imagery into farce. By contrast, Love Birds depicts a beautiful subject - birds in flight - rendered with material that is deadly to them. It is the material itself that brings the destructive force beneath the beauty of the birds into full view.
Jason Alexander Byers grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and studied sculpture at Kent
State University. While there, he turned his attention to the absurd, indulgent and wildly
inventive arts scene of Kent, Ohio. Since moving to Brooklyn, Byers has continued working on
fine art, exploring his fascination with cityscapes and skylines by using tar to trace the positive
and negative space of New York City’s churches and skyscrapers. His most recent series,
, marries his trademark medium of black tar with his lifelong passion for birdwatching,
resulting in dramatic silhouettes of birds in flight.
Media
Schedule
from November 19, 2015 to December 19, 2015
Opening Reception on 2015-11-19 from 18:00 to 20:00