George Byrne: Synthetica

Gallery 33 in partnership with Show Gallery is pleased to present Synthetica, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based Australian artist George Byrne. References to magical realism, modernism, theosophy, and AI combine to explore the tension between the natural and the artificial. The exhibition challenges preconceptions of reality in an increasingly digital age while paying homage to Byrne’s analog photo roots and the influence of new topographic photographers.

Starting from medium format film photographs taken with his Pentax 67 camera, Byrne’s process is one of addition, subtraction, and collage: revealing a new image with the vivid clarity of modernist painting and transforming everyday landscapes and surfaces into painterly abstractions. In Synthetica, glimpses of Los Angeles’ urban scenery are hinted at and intertwined with snapshots of epic landscapes and Americana from Byrne’s road trips across the country. Natural and man-made, pieces of Daytona Beach to Death Valley, Yellowstone, National Park to Miami’s Cuban quarter are all amalgamated into dreamscapes, often decentralized with no discernible location.