Vilma Gold

Nicholas Byrne

A Catholic Episode

17 Jan – 14 Feb 2010

  • Installation view. A Catholic Episode
, Nicholas Byrne
    Installation view
  • Installation view. A Catholic Episode
, Nicholas Byrne
    Installation view
  • Installation view. A Catholic Episode
, Nicholas Byrne
    Installation view
  • Installation view. A Catholic Episode
, Nicholas Byrne
    Installation view
  • Installation view. A Catholic Episode
, Nicholas Byrne
    Installation view
  • Installation view. A Catholic Episode
, Nicholas Byrne
    Installation view
  • Installation view. A Catholic Episode
, Nicholas Byrne
    Installation view
  • Installation view. A Catholic Episode
, Nicholas Byrne
    Installation view
  • Installation view. A Catholic Episode
, Nicholas Byrne
    Installation view
  • Vilma Gold is pleased to announce an exhibition of thirteen new works by Nicholas Byrne. Drawing on copper and linen, Nicholas Byrne’s paintings are composed of superimpositions of febrile surfaces; built up, scraped down and layered over again. Curves, spirals and loops recur: Dynamic forms, leading the gaze around the surface. Occasionally, uniform planes of colour impose themselves across the surface but don’t allow the eye to rest. Rather than providing a ground, planes of pure colour serve to obscure forms and thus agitate perception. The work employs a diverse lexicon of art historical references, but takes particular influence from notions developed during the Rococo period concerning the motivating effect that sinuous form exerts upon the beholder’s gaze, leading it around the surface of the picture as if following a dancer. There is an erotic sense to this notion- the viewer’s pursuit of an object of desire- and in Byrne’s paintings this pursuit is sublimated into intricate plays of display and concealment. Themechanicallyreproducednatureofphotographicsourcematerialstandsinoppositiontothe paint- erly process: the indexical ‘freezing’ of a dynamic scene through photochemical reaction and the mimetic translation of this through marking, layering and scraping down. The process incorporates the stopping and reactivation of flows or fluxes, both representational and material. Images are arrested before they reach the point of representational stability. This arresting of image is facilitated by changes in mark-making; a plane of colour is scraped back then traversed by impasto marks. The industrially fabricated elements also refer to this aspect of process: copper, used as a support (medium of electromagnetic flux), wrought iron, with dynamic forms solidified (index of thermodynamic flux), marble paper (index of liquid flux). How might this deployment of process bear on the interpretive meaning of the work? There is a constant tension between the realisation of the image or figuration – the object-bearer of the beholder’s projections and cathexes – and its physical disruption or deterioration. The image, in the sense of a formal, recognizable gestalt, is attacked to the point that it separates from its material instantiation, leaving the viewer in a state of confusion between projection of form and perception of formless matter. As well as appearing as the unarticulated material ground out of which an image is constructed, formlessness appears as an imposition, arresting or blocking the realisation of an image in its representational wholeness. Process is thus meaningful in its alternate revealing/ veiling activity, and in this way it perhaps relates to the title of the exhibition. ‘Catholic’ may be understood to allude to the exercise of denial of representational wholeness, or the repression and fetishistic fracture of form. ‘Episode’ invokes physicality or materiality in its inscription of the durational or experiential aspect of the process of creation. Born in Oldham, Nicholas Byrne lives and works in London. He studied at the Royal College of Art and had a solo exhibition at Studio Voltaire in 2008. Byrne was recently included in ‘The Dark Monarch’, Tate St.Ives (touring to Eastbourne) as well as in group shows at Mark Foxx, Los Angeles (2007) and International 3, Manchester (touring to Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne). He will be showing at David Zwirner, New York and at the Saatchi Gallery in 2010.

    For further information or images please contact Martin Rasmussen: +44 (0)20 7729 9888 or: martin@vilmagold.com