Beasts, a series of black-and-white, silver gelatin photographs was shot inside the Biologiska museet, Stockholm, a museum which housed a 360-degree diorama depicting a panoramic sweep of the Nordic wilderness, in an elaborate mise-en-scène combining taxidermy with a painted backdrop. The museum remained almost unchanged between 1893 and its unexpected closure midway through Byrne’s production, in 2017. The artist’s interest in the museum was first inspired by the peculiar visual appearance of the diorama, which is illuminated solely by natural light entering from roof skylights. For Byrne, this dependence on daylight blurred the distinction between museum and camera. With its skylights functioning as lens aperture and its diorama of taxidermy animals poised in frozen photographic stasis, the Biologiska Museet appeared proto-photographic, it’s diorama a foreshadow of the Photograph itself. Beasts is testament to in-animation; each print pictures the carefully poised relationship between photography and deadness.

• PDF - Beasts
• Gerard Byrne in The Week in Art podcast by The Art Newspaper (36:15 minutes in)
• Gerard Byrne in the Goethe Institut's podcast

Gerard Byrne was born in 1969 in Dublin where he lives and works. Recent venues for solo presentations include Secession, Vienna (2019), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2017), ACCA, Melbourne and Mead Gallery, UK (both 2016), Graz Museum, Austria and Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland (both 2015); Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland and Whitechapel Gallery, London (both 2013), Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon (2012), IMMA, Dublin and the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (both 2011), the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art and Lismore Castle Arts, Ireland (both 2010), ICA, Boston and Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (both 2008), Düsseldorf Kunstverein and Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver (both 2007), and MUMOK, Vienna (2006). He participated in Skulptur Projekte Münster (2017), dOCUMENTA 13 (2012), Performa 11 and the 54th Venice Biennale (both 2011), Gwangju Biennale and Biennale of Sydney (both 2008), Lyon Biennale (2007), the Tate Triennial (2006) and the Istanbul Biennale (2003). In 2007 he represented Ireland at the 52nd Venice Biennale.

Galerie Nordenhake focus is a sealed exhibition room, visible in its entirety from the exterior, highlighting a single artwork or body of work. In its focus on individual artworks the space acts as a counterpoint to the ongoing exhibition program at the main gallery space at Hudiksvallsgatan.

The space is accessible by appointment.

For more information please contact the gallery.

GALERIE NORDENHAKE
Hudiksvallsgatan 8
SE-113 30 Stockholm
T: +46 8 211 892
stockholm@nordenhake.com