.aesthetic talk
*George Byrne
with Jessah Amarante
Minimalism can be described as the grandchild of the Bauhaus movement and is a stripped down version of a bigger image, thought, or idea.
Minimalist art and design offer us a pure and simple form of beauty that can represent truth, order, simplicity, and harmony (because it doesn’t pretend to be what it isn’t). Musician-Minimal Photographer George Byrne, Brother of Actress Rose Byrne, based in the city of Los Angeles, the photographer aims to use natural lighting, contrast, and shadows to depict his minimalistic approach of abstract direction. Developed in the USA in the 1960s and typified by artworks composed of simple geometric shapes based on the square and the rectangle, Byrne has mastered capturing the essence of LA solitude and calmness in a still of disposable architectures, landscapes of bright colors in symmetry. Born in Sydney in 1976, graduated from College Of The Arts in 2001, traveled globally for exploration to see where he wanted to settle down until he landed permanently in Los Angeles in 2010 where he has been focusing on his photographic practices ever since.
East Hollywood Carpark 2016
© Courtesy George Byrne
99c Silverlake
© Courtesy George Byrne
.artist talk
George Byrne
speaks with
Jessah Amarante
first published in:
Issue Nr. 25, 02/2018
Minimalism is a term referring to those movements or styles in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work of art is reduced to its necessary elements. In Byrne’s work, you’ll get to see that he allows these images to come across as simple, clean, and timeless.
WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON RIGHT NOW?
Right now, I’m preparing work for a solo exhibition in Oslo, Norway
YOU HAVE MENTIONED “COLOR, CONTOUR & TEXTURE” FOR THE “NEW ORDER” SERIES. IS THAT THE MEDIUM YOU USE FOR ALL OF YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY WORK?
Yes, to a degree, but for the New Order series I chose to move away from more traditional, literal landscapes and push the work closer to pure abstraction.
PEOPLE ADVOCATE YOUR WORK TO BE THE ‘MODERNIST PAINTINGS”, CAPTURING THE SUBLIMINAL IN THE SUBLIME. WHAT ARE THE STAKES OF ‘MODERNIST PAINTINGS’ AND DO YOU AGREE THAT YOUR CRAFT HAS PAINTERLY ABSTRACT IMPRESSIONS?
I suppose the stakes of Modernist painting would be the challenge of creating something complex and interesting without doing too much. To explore a sort of refined efficiency in mark making and expression & to look at the base relationship of color and form and composition. It’s quite childlike in a way but it’s actually very hard to do well. I was painting before I was taking photographs and - as a painter - I was very much taking cues from Modernist masters, so I think those instincts are alive and well in these photographs. The cool thing about this series is that, because I was I’m now working in a different medium (photography not paint), these painterly influences came about more intuitively, almost by accident.
HAVE YOU EVER COME ACROSS CREATIVE BLOCKS AND IF YES, HOW DO YOU OVERCOME THEM?
I tend to have the opposite problem, I take way too many pictures and have too many ideas stumbling over each other in my head. What I’ve learned in the few years that I’ve been a full-time artist is that the exhibition process is crucial to the discipline of creating coherent bodies of work. It’s very similar to the experience I’ve had being a musician in that every year or two you release an LP with 12 songs, and each LP takes the DNA form the previous release and builds on it, and things evolve.
Burbank
© Courtesy George Byrne
Hyperion 2015
© Courtesy George Byrne