Bryne’s drawings are surreal, playful, and thought-provoking. David Byrne is a New York-based artist whose artworks span from photography, drawing, installations, performance to design. Bryne’s latest exhibition How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic, reveals his selected drawings from over the last 20 years of his career. This exhibition features the artist’s series of drawings made during the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of his tree drawings (2000’s), and a selection of his drawings of chairs (2004-2007).
Girl Head Chair (2006) depicts a chair made from someone’s face. This work is a kind of shocking image. The viewers usually see eyes in a face, but now a chair. “Shock” is the central concept in modern art and Walter Benjamin’s theory. According to Walter Benjamin, the shock effect in modern art was cushioned by “a heightened presence of mind”. The shocking image stops our ordinary way of thinking. It changes and forces the beholder’s mind to think out of the box. Byrne’s drawing is like a mind attack, that postpones rational thought, and turns it into a creative way of thinking.
David Byrne, Covid Exam, 2020, fadeproof waterproof ink on archival paper, 7-1/2″ × 10″ (19.1 cm × 25.4 cm), paper 11″ × 14″ (27.9 cm × 35.6 cm), frame. (© David Byrne, courtesy Pace Gallery)
Bryne also often imbues his drawing with humor. In his drawing Covid Exam (2020), he portrays human’s legs coming out of the nostrils, as if they’re observing what’s inside the nose. Anyone who has had Covid 19 experience knows how to find out whether they have contracted the virus or not, through a PCR test. This drawing is a caricature of the COVID test. Byrne created this work during the COVID-19 pandemic and displayed it in his online exhibition “The Dingbats”.
David Byrne, Who’s A Pretty Boy Then? (2021). (© David Byrne, courtesy Pace Gallery)
Byrne’s works are also a sort of critique on mass culture. Who’s A Pretty Boy Then? (2021) illustrate a pigeon mirroring himself, but a boy appears in the mirror. This work reminds me of social media habits, in which usually there is a gap between real life and what appears in social media accounts. Instead of exposing us to a more diverse world, social media often lead to drama and social pressure. Immersive (2021) depicts a man with big headphones. This is like today’s people reality when they are immersive in their tech devices, like smartphones, tablet, or VR glasses and headset.
David Byrne, Immersive, 2021, Ink on paper 9 × 12 in 22.9 × 30.5 cm. (© David Byrne, courtesy Pace Gallery)
Byrne tree drawings are a satire of analytic and rational thinking. They look like scientific diagrams with some unrelated/related words connecting each other. He describes this work as “faux science, automatic writing, self-analysis, satire and maybe even a serious attempt at finding connections where none were thought to exist. And an excuse to draw plant-like forms and diagrams.”
David Byrne is truly a genius, humorous, and creative artist who can create artworks without any material constraints.