乔治．伯恩：色彩场域
George Byrne: COLOR FIELD
艺术家 Artist︱乔治．伯恩 George Byrne
展期 Duration︱November 5, 2021 － January 16, 2022
线上展间 Online Viewing Room︱
https://onlineviewingroom.com/exhibition/EVGVPFET1DIX/
资讯 Info︱www.powengallery.com
* 此展览为线上展出形式 Online Exclusive Exhibition
乔治．伯恩（George Byrne）和他的图像炼金术
文 ︳严潇潇
於城市景观中捕捉近乎几何抽象般的色彩片断，是定居洛杉矶的澳洲艺术家乔治．伯恩（George Byrne）典型的摄影母题，他描述自己花费大量的时间慢慢开车游荡在街头巷尾，只为找寻加州天光下「不饱和的色彩和不起眼的低矮建筑」。而透过不断创作出表现色彩丶光影丶线条丶形状丶材料等元素之间互动关系的作品，他所实践的是一种被其称为「炼金术」的图像构建实验。
受过完整艺术学院教育的伯恩，以其对艺术史的熟稔与美学敏感，不着痕迹地结合了摄影的直观与绘画的肌理与层次；同时也受上个世纪後半叶美国的「新地景摄影」（New Topographics）运动所影响。当他确立以摄影为主要创作媒介後，更以数位拼贴这样尤具时代性的手法来创作。其作品中的日常片断，并非完全来自某个结合了光影与街景的瞬间，而是会在现实所见之基础上，画龙点睛般加入从其他风景中挪移来的元素，或是如其在近年的创作系列「後真实」（Post Truth）中那样，选择其所搜集到的色彩与形状进行再利用与再创造，以内部缝合的方式完成美学风格统一的拼贴作品。这种创作手法上的选择，是出於对「创作图像」这件事丶而非仅仅是拍摄的兴趣，对他而言，这些摄影作品「既是观察所得，也是创造之物──它们基於真实，却也拥抱开放性诠释」。由此，伯恩成功接合了不同的视觉艺术媒材及其各自的艺术史脉络，勾画出超越现实的美感经验，并进一步回应了以社群化丶片断化的视觉文化为重要特徵的当代社会。
George Byrne and His Image Alchemy
Article by Yan Xiao-Xiao
Geometric-like abstract color fragments of urban landscape are typical motifs in the works of George Byrne, an Australian photographic artist based in Los Angeles. He describes the huge amount of time he spends cruising through streets and alleys just to find the “unsaturated colors and inconspicuous low-rise buildings” under the Californian sky. Through his prolific creations that manifest the interaction of elements such as colors, light and shadow, lines, shapes, and materials, Byrne practices a kind of image construction experiment called “alchemy”.
Byrne, who has received a complete art school education, is familiar with art history and sensitive to aesthetics. He seamlessly combines the intuition of photography with the texture and layers in painting. At the same time, he is also influenced by the New Topographics movement in the United States during the second half of the last century.
After having established photography as his main creative medium, he even uses contemporary digital collage to create his works. The daily fragments found in his works are not entirely from a moment that combines light and shadow with street scenes. Rather, they are built on what is seen in reality and embellished with elements borrowed from other landscapes. The colors and shapes may also be borrowed from those he collected and be reused, recreated, and to complete a unified aesthetic collage through an internal stitching method, which is like his recent series, “Post Truth”. This choice of creative technique stems from his interest in “creating images” rather than just shooting photos.
For Byrne, these photographic works are “both the outcome of observation and creation – they are based on what is real but also embrace open interpretation.” As a result, Byrne successfully combines different visual art media and their respective art history contexts to create an aesthetic experience that transcends reality and goes even further to reflect a contemporary society that is characterized by socialized and fragmented visual culture.
