George Byrne “Exit Vision”

Olsen Gruin

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Olsen Gruin presents Exit Vision, a solo exhibition by Australian artist George Byrne. Exit Vision, George Byrne’s second exhibition at Olsen Gruin Gallery, features painterly photographs that tease the eye with an expanse of color and cityscape. Byrne reassembles the American urban landscape into austere, stripped-down collages of geometric form and expression. A follow up to his show Post Truth, which embraced experimentation through photo-collage, Exit Vision masterfully balances the use of film and post production techniques.

Byrne’s practice is predicated on a belief that film photography is the closest visual medium to the “truth”, to what is literally seen by the eye. He says “the term Exit Vision relates to my own departure from what is literally seen by the eye, to what is felt and imagined. I’m looking to merge the two modes of thought and explore the tension between them. I had begun to feel the limitations of conventional photography, and this process allowed me to push the medium.”

Traveling through Miami, Los Angeles, and Sydney carrying his traditional medium-format film camera, Byrne is attracted to these three coastal cities and their distinct light and color palettes. Architectural compositions of wall, sky, and roads are rendered in radiant pastels and occasional primary hues. Taking inspiration from the work of the “New Topographics” —the American photographers whose seemingly banal aesthetic of urban landscapes veiled a growing unease at industrial development— Byrne seeks to capture something beyond the façade.

First sourced as “sketches” on his iPhone, Byrne assembles semi-fictional landscapes from multiple perspectives like a cubist painting. After re-shooting the source material with a variety of analog and digital medium format cameras, Byrne collages the photographic imagery in the studio to realize luminous images where composition speaks to precision, yet also convey an unexpected lyrical form of minimalism. The work is printed using an archival pigment printing technique, ultimately producing work that comfortably straddles the distinction between photograph and painting.

George Byrne, born in Sydney in 1976, graduated from Sydney College of The Arts in 2001, travelled extensively, and then settled in Los Angeles in 2010 where he has been focused on his photographic practice. Byrne has had solo exhibitions at Olsen Gallery, Sydney (2019, 2017), Olsen Gruin, New York, (2017), Olsen Irwin, Sydney (2016), Soho House, Los Angeles (2016), Contact Photo, Los Angeles (2015), Hemingway and Pickett, Los Angeles (2013), Charles Hewitt Gallery, Sydney (2009), Span Gallery, Melbourne AU (2002); Global Gallery, Paddington AU (2001, 2000).