George Byrne's "Painterly Abstractions"
Text by Demetra Nikolakakis
Copy Editor: Lara Southern
Specializing in landscape photography, George Byrne aims to depict the world we live in through “painterly abstractions”, his images invoking Neoplasticism. Buildings and structures represent little more than blocks of color and shape, their day-to-day purposes brushed aside. Subjects are portrayed only as beautiful objects, allowing the photos’ allure to lie in the juxtaposition of form.
Though pastel hues and bubblegum pinks may be common in pop art and children’s toys, they are seldom found organically in real life. Yet in Byrne’s photographs, their presence is highlighted – blues and greens and pinks adorning everyday buildings and structures. By employing a wide depth of field, Byrne is able to prevent any details from blurring, resulting in striking, collage-like images.
In Byrne’s 2017 series New Order, the surrealist photographer portrays a variety of brightly colored buildings and structures, often captured against vivid skies. Though the subjects’ daily purposes are ignored, Byrne’s focus on color and shape allows the architecture to take on greater prominence. Lines and shadows create contours, while walls and objects block out sections of each photograph. Striking colors combine with unorthodox framing to create abstract, surrealist images.
Still, many images in New Order retain recognizable elements. In the center of “Green Ciera” lies a tall shrub, sandwiched between a parking lot and a residential lot, a home in the background. Though the house’s roof is posited as a triangle cutting through the sky’s bright blue, viewers can still recognize the building’s original purpose, peeling back one of the layers of abstraction present in many of Byrne’s other works. Similarly, several images that feature white crosswalks and blue storefront awnings set against bright walls are recognizable as store parking lot entrances, despite the interpretive quality of the images.
In contrast, Byrne’s 2019 series Post Truth features the same preoccupation with composition prevalent in most of the photographer’s work, yet the implied context of New Order has been stripped away. Rather than depicting buildings or structures whose daily purpose might still be recognized (or at least inferred), subjects of Post Truth are heavily decontextualized, placing even greater emphasis on the shapes, colors, and shadows. Though the photographs’ titles (which range from “Yellow Wall” to “Gas Station, Route 66”) may reveal the subject’s location or daily purpose, determining the context of the buildings from the photos alone is near impossible, intensifying the images’ surrealist nature.
One of the most striking images of the series, “Lings” depicts a pink multi-story building, with several palm trees scattered in the distance. On the roof stands a pink billboard, the word “LINGS” written across it in bold letters. Though the building’s appearance is unobstructed and “LINGS” could be interpreted as the name of the company, it is difficult to tell what the building’s daily function is. Instead, the hot pink sections of the building take prominence, their geometric structure invoking a set of toy blocks. Still, although the image is undeniably surreal, it remains one of the more realistic of the series. In contrast, the photograph “Parking Garage” features a variety of multi-colored concrete shapes, the original subject matter incomprehensible without the aid of the image’s title. Similarly, “Peach Wall #2” is simply a photograph of a pink wall, the lines and shadows creating abstract patterns and generating visual interest while eschewing the specificity of context, typical of the artist’s unique and striking vision.
Post Truth is currently viewable at the domicile (n.) gallery in Los Angeles, and an accompanying book is available via Byrne’s website.