Gerard Byrne

A photographer and filmmaker, Gerard Byrne has amassed an impressive body of work that offers a coy look at the many absurdities of our world today. Byrne draws on art history, exhibitions by other artists, men’s magazines, advertising, and pop culture to create visually appealing and intellectually complex conceptual investigations. Particularly interested in language—the way the transition from text to image can obscure meaning, or how taking a script out of context can invert the entire intention of the dialogue—Byrne has created numerous works that wittily exploit the many possibilities for interpretation and understanding. 

Byrne represented Ireland at the 2007 Venice Biennale, where he showed 1984 & Beyond, a film that takes as its point of departure a Playboy article that featured a roundtable discussion with twelve science fiction writers. He has also been the subject of solo exhibitions at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, the Whitechapel Gallery, Dusseldorf Kunstverein, and the Frankfurter Kunstverein.