George Byrne's photography depicts the gritty urbanism of Los Angeles in sublime otherworldliness. Arriving a decade ago, the Australian artist was immediately enthralled by the sprawling cityscape of L.A., mesmerised by the way the sunlight transformed it, into two-dimensional, almost painterly abstractions. In his Post Truth series (2015?22), Byrne reassembles his photos of the urban landscape into striking, ascetic collages of colour and geometric fragments, creating a postmodernist oasis in the metropolis. By masterfully harnessing the malleability of the photographic medium, the photographer situates his work in the space between real and imagined. Byrne's compositions evoke associations with Miami Beach's Art Deco, the Memphis Group's designs, as well as the painting of David Hockney or Ed Ruscha, and at the same time tap into the aesthetics of today's visual culture played out on Instagram. AUTHOR: George Byrne creates large-scale photographs that depict everyday surfaces and landscapes as painterly abstractions. Borrowing from the clean, vivid clarity of modernist painting, he also references the New Topographics photography movement via a subject matter firmly entrenched in the urban everyday. ?I'd always been interested in urban photography, but it wasn't until I moved to LA and started shooting in color and experimenting with manipulation and assemblage that I felt I was able to do anything very expressive or original with it. The images I'm making now are based on reality but quite removed from it at the same time, hence the effect is one of pleasurable disconcertion. They are dreamscapes." ? GB. Born in Sydney in 1976, Byrne graduated from Sydney College Of The Arts in 2001, travelled extensively, and then settled in Los Angeles in 2011 - where he now lives and works. SELLING POINTS: . A beautiful reissue of POST TRUTH, George Byrne - one of the most recognisable contemporary photographers working today . George Byrne's photographs have reimagined the visual language of Los Angeles . George has reconfigured urban street photography into high art . George Byrne's work transcends the photographic medium, what was static is not malleable, what was truth is now subjective. The fun is working out what you're looking at and why . George Byrne's images are dreamscapes, portals for reinvention and refection . Featuring previously unseen pictures . Includes essays by leading art thinkers Percival Everett, Ian Volner 68 colour illustrations
