5 May – 8 July 2007
GERARD BYRNE
The photographic and filmic works of the Irish artist Gerard Byrne refer back to texts and images, in which social sensitivities and concerns are dealt with in a subtle manner.The spectrum ranges from a conversation with Jean Paul Sartre to interviews in various lifestyle magazines from the 1960s and 1970s dramatically re-enacted by Byrne. The fact that, in retrospect, often very little remain of past visions, even though they still always seem to retain a certain actuality, runs throughout his work like a basic motif.
The building of the Kunstverein itself-with its architecture characterized by the promise of Modernism-played an important role in the decision to invite Gerard Byrne to hold a solo exhibition here, because he places postmodern »progressive thinking« in a direct dialogue with questions of representation. How do ideologies imprint themselves upon images and to what extent should the ideas of Modernism be viewed from their own temporal context? Byrne's method of re-enacting segments of history is based upon found material, such as advertisements and newspaper articles, which are re-contextualized in the form of installations. The starting point for »New Sexual Lifestyles« (2003) would be the parallel stories about Goulding House, for example-a piece of modernist, glass architecture in Ireland-and a discussion on the sexual revolution published in 1973 in the American magazine Playboy. The discussion was re-enacted using different actors in the rooms of the Goulding House. In the context of the installation, the video reconstructions of the discussion are spread across three monitors and are accompanied within the space with large-format photographs of Goulding House. »New Sexual Lifestyles« establishes in this way a relationship between the history of architecture and that of the magazine, which for its part, using completely different media, featured those very ideological and rhetorical figures that fashioned the 1970s.
In the film »1984 and beyond«, which in turn is based upon a discussion published in Playboy in 1963 between scientists and science fiction authors on the topic of George Orwell's dystopian vision, absurd ideas about the future are put forward from the vantage point of the present day in similar fashion, although without actually discounting the scope of any critical engagement with Orwell. It is more the case here that past and present encounter one another in a particular form, which allows for the layering of respective social and ideological perspectives.
Byrne's films are also influenced by Bertolt Brecht's writings on Epic Theatre and utilize the latter's »alienation« or defamiliarization effect as an instrument of insight. The distanced view of themes from a different era, which may appear dated to us, is distanced a second time and becomes thus an absurd game between speculation and reality.
Gerard Byrne will feature work in the Irish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year. His solo exhibition in the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen-the first comprehensive presentation of his work in Germany-offers an overview of his work to date.
A catalogue has been published in conjunction with the Irish Pavilion:
The Present Tense Through The Ages - On the recent work of Gerard Byrne