George Byrne’s Synthetica is a collection of works that explore the tension between the natural and the artificial, challenging preconceptions of reality in an increasingly digital age while paying homage to the artist’s analogue photographic roots.
The series isn’t grounded purely in Los Angeles; there are hints of LA and random urban junk space, but there is also a twist, blending in epic landscapes, both manmade and natural, from Daytona Beach to Death Valley and Yellowstone National Park, to decentralise the works, so the locations feel more displaced.
Gallery owner and art connoisseur Tim Olsen notes, “Byrne’s adept exploration of urban landscapes, whether domestic or industrial, challenges our predisposed perceptions of the ordinary. Transforming the overlooked terrain of Los Angeles and beyond, into a stage for aesthetic contemplation, Byrne prompts us to pause and scrutinize the ostensibly banal settings we might have otherwise dismissed.”
George Byrnes, Assemblage Miami, 2024, archival pigment print; Large: 120.7 x 149.2cm, ed. of 5 + 2 AP; Medium: 85.7 x 106cm, ed. of 5 + 2 AP; Small: 68.6 x 84.5cm, ed. of 10. Courtesy the artist and OLSEN Gallery
“My work is a comment on the way I perceive the world around me, it’s a way of seeing the thing in front of me, and then sitting down and concentrating my mind to see if you can envisage something past the thing, the imagined world, a Synthetic world,” says Byrne.
“I think the message of this show is levity, dreams, magic. It’s part dreams, part diary entry, part escapism. Pushing to make epic scenes out of everyday spaces, but also pointing the lens back to nature in a way I haven’t before.”
OLSEN Gallery
7 February to 2 March 2024
Sydney
