ABOUT HUGH BYRNE

Hugh Byrne is a visual artist currently working in Cape Town. He completed an honours degree in fine art from the University of Pretoria. Whilst predominantly focusing on painting; previous exhibitions have included photography, sculpture and installation. Revisiting and recycling earlier, sometimes abandoned, painterly experiments are central to Hugh Byrne’s practice. They are the products of a constant process of creation, destruction, appropriation and rediscovery which ultimately trouble, and even collapse, the divisions between ‘painting’ and ‘object’.

‘Colour and structure are divisible as ideas but in Byrne’s paintings they are also joyously enmeshed: colour is structure. This is true throughout his inventive body of work. In his earlier works, Byrne often painted with a mapmaker’s sense of boundaries. So he stacked his colours like blocks or overlapped them as if making a collage, but he never caused them to mingle. The boundary prevailed. To a degree, this method and understanding persists in his new work. Over time, though, Byrne has allowed himself to paint in a looser and messier style. It began to suggest itself in his camouflage-like paintings from 2017, which were an advance on his earlier trompe l’œil series Orientation (2016). By the time Byrne started working on his Form Sequence series (2018), compositions featuring overlaid skins of colour and visible patterning from brushwork, his old faith in sharp lines and absolute divisions of colour had yielded. In Chorus included a display of radical studio experiments, among them cut up canvases that make Lucio Fontana’s incised canvases seem tame, juxtaposed against Rothko-esque colourfields crafted from sundered bits of studio detritus’

Sean O’Toole is a contributing editor to Frieze magazine (London/USA).

Solo Exhibitions

2022    ‘Quick on Your Feet’, EBONY/CURATED, Franschhoek, South Africa

2020    ‘All Things Considered’, Lumisol, Munich, Germany in Collaboration with EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

2020    ‘In Chorus’, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

2018    ‘Destabilising the Object’, EBONY/CURATED, Franschhoek, South Africa

2018    ‘Point And Line’, Barnard Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2017    ‘Tipping Point’, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

2017    ‘Flipside’, Warren Editions, Cape Town, South Africa

2016    Solo Booth at Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg, South Africa

2015    ‘Tattarrattat’, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

Group Exhibitions

2021   ‘In [the] Loop, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

2021    ‘Colors of Abstraction’, 193 Gallery, Paris, in Collaboration with EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

2020   FNB Art Joburg, EBONY/CURATED, Johannesburg, South Africa

2020   ‘Homework’, Barnard Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2020   ‘All Things Considered’, EBONY/CURATED, Bascule Bridge House, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town, South Africa

2020   Investec Cape Town Art Fair, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

2019   ‘AKAA (Also Known As Africa)’ 2019, Paris, France

2019    Investec Cape Town Art Fair, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

2019    ‘Barnard Collective’, Barnard Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2018    ‘nano 1.2-’, Barnard Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2017    ‘From The Horses Mouth’, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

2017    ‘Summer Exhibition, Barnard Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2017    Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg, South Africa

2016    ‘Abstracted’, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

2016    ‘nano-’, Barnard Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2016    That Art Fair, Cape Town, South Africa

2016    ‘Summer Exhibition’, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

2015    ‘In Collaboration With’, THAT Art Fair, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

2015    ‘Landscapes’, EBONY/CURATED, Franschhoek, South Africa

2015    ‘Group Show’, Literary Festival, EBONY/CURATED, Franschhoek, South Africa

2014    ‘Emergence’, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa

2014    ‘Group Show’, EBONY/CURATED, Franschhoek, South Africa

2014    ‘Group Show’, Youngblood Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2013    ‘New Works’, Haas Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2013    ‘The Editions Show’, Salon 91, Cape Town, South Africa

2013    ‘One in a Million’, Salon 91, Cape Town, South Africa

2013    ‘Group Show’, Youngblood Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2012    ‘First Thursday’, Divine Room New Heritage Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2012    ‘Conditions’, White River Gallery, Nelspruit, South Africa

2012    ‘I’d Rather Be Swimming’, Salon 91, Cape Town, South Africa

2012    ‘Industrial Abstractions’, The Factory, Durban, South Africa

2012    ‘Expression Sunset’, Salon 91, Cape Town, South Africa

2012    ‘Shedding Skins’, ELE Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2010    ‘Discovered City’, Mahe Xin, Taipei, Taiwan

2006    ‘Abstraction in Colour’, Side Café, Pretoria, South Africa