George Byrne | Synthetica | Advance Preview

This preview has now closed. All paintings are now available for viewing on George Byrne's artist page. Please click here to see all available works in this collection.

George Byrne | Synthetica
July 10 - August 4, 2025
Bau-Xi Gallery | Dufferin
1384 Dufferin Street, Toronto

Acclaimed photographic artist George Byrne returns with Synthetica, a bold new exhibition that fuses analogue photography with digital innovation to reimagine the American landscape. Rooted in Byrne’s early influences from the New Topographics movement, this series marks a striking evolution in his practice. Where once he documented, he now deconstructs and rebuilds - layering, subtracting, and collaging until a new reality emerges. The result is a collection of surreal yet grounded dreamscapes, where the ordinary is elevated and the boundaries between the natural and the artificial dissolve. From Daytona Beach to Yellowstone, Synthetica is both a visual journey and a conceptual inquiry - exploring the way we perceive, manipulate, and emotionally respond to our environments in a hyper-mediated, AI-inflected age.

Artist statement:

This series explores the tension between the natural and the artificial, challenging preconceptions of reality in an increasingly digital age, while also paying homage to my analogue photographic roots. Starting out as an artist, I was very much a student of the New Topographics photographic movement, a style based on the artist's neutral eye, famous for documenting the mundane structures of post-war America. About 5 years ago, I started to become interested in employing various forms of manipulation and digital reconstruction into the work I was making. As a result, the images were able to become more expressive and introspective; a bridge between my subconscious and conscious.  Each image in the Synthetica series started as a medium format film photograph, then, through a process of addition, subtraction, collage and endless reevaluation, a new completed image is born. The foundation of a lot of the images in this series were taken over the last few years during road trips I took around the United States. From Daytona Beach to Yellowstone National Park, these were both natural and man-made landscapes - places I'd never been. – George Byrne

All artworks are now available for acquisition. To secure a piece, please contact us at 416-977-0600 or toronto@bau-xi.com.