George Byrne | Synthetica
GEORGE BYRNE | SYNTHETICA
UPPER GALLERY
NOVEMBER 8-26, 2025
Opening Reception: Sat. November 8, 2-4 pm
3045 Granville Street, Vancouver
Bau-Xi Vancouver is thrilled to present Synthetica, the latest solo exhibition from acclaimed photographic artist George Byrne for its inaugural showing in Vancouver, following its Toronto debut in July 2025 at Bau-Xi Dufferin.
Fusing analogue photography with digital innovation to reimagine the American landscape, Synthetica is rooted in Byrne’s early influences from the New Topographics movement and 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 foundations 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, 2025
On Synthetica's inaugural showing in Vancouver:
I’m really excited about the opportunity to show this body of work at the beautiful Bau-Xi Gallery in Vancouver. Synthetica is a pivotal series for me because it crystallises a decade of living and working in Los Angeles. It’s where my process of reassembling fragments of the urban environment found its fullest expression, fusing photography with a painterly sense of rhythm and colour, and pushing the work into a more mysterious, emotionally charged space.
What I hope people take from it is a pause, a chance to re-see the familiar city in a new way, to feel the rhythm, colour and stillness within it. For me the work is about finding a kind of beauty and mystery in the overlooked, calm in chaos. I’d love for viewers in Vancouver to tune into that frequency too.
-George Byrne, 2025