Some gestalt forms...
Gerard Byrne
Some gestalt forms surveyed, and organized into primary structures, on dates between 2001 – 2011 Site: Loch Ness, Scotland.
Installation, silver gelatin prints, 16mm film, found objects, linen lined vitrine.
UK 2001–ongoing
Byrne’s Some gestalt forms… is an ongoing, multivalent - and multiply titled - body of work focused on Scotland’s famous Loch Ness and its affiliate folk legends of an elusive resident freshwater monster of archaic pedigree. As Brian Dillon (2011) observes, Byrne “point[s] out in his usual mischievous fashion that the protocols devised by contemporary artists – the photograph presented seemingly as mute evidence, brushing up enigmatically against textual addenda – are not so far removed from the habits of the eccentrics and hobbyists they might encounter in the landscape, or so different from the ruses of the popular press.” While for Cecilia Grönberg (2011), “Byrne inserts a wedge in the (already long since problematized) equalization of visual observation and truth: photography as a technology allied with the privileging of visual observation as the way to knowledge of objects and the world.” In sum, it can be argued that, in both concept and exhibition, Byrne exerts a subversive pressure on the apparatuses of museological display, taxonomy, and documentation, etc.; the project generating meaning out of a ricocheting between these different institutional and discursive modalities. (Barnaby Dicker)
Gerard Byrne, born 1969 in Dublin, where he lives and works.
References
Anthony Spira and Andrea Viliani (eds.), Gerard Byrne: Gestalt Forms of Loch Ness: Grid Site Sequence (Zürich: JRP|Ringier Kunstverlag AG, 2012).
Cecilia Grönberg, “Byrne’s Maelstrom.” Kunstkritikk 27.09.11, http://www.kunstkritikk.no/wp-content/themes/KK/ajax/general/print.php?id=19307&r=0.09570529498159885.
Brian Dillon, “At the MK.” London Review of Books, March 2011, https://www.lrb.co.uk/2011/03/23/brian-dillon/at-the-mk.