Henry Byrne

Sculpture and painting is ‘a continuous perpetual Present’ Michael Fried

Through my work I am exploring the link between the visual experience and the representation of the experience it creates. The actual danger of an explosion in a film has no danger to me; the possibility stimulates a reaction. The more explosions I watch, the greater my need for visual ‘realism’ becomes. The visual language that I accept as ‘real’ becomes more fantastical. When filming explosions of smoke the interpretation of that movement and the experience is lost through the indirect medium of film. Using real movement as well as the interpreted movement in my film I incorporate performance as well as documentation. Five TV’s show a dying light illuminated by smoke being blown across the televisions from left to right. A real fan blows on the first television. The physical movement of the fan engages the senses, adding reality to the work. Digital flux of the smoke coincides with the physical fan creating a relationship between the two objects. The movement of the smoke jumps between the separated televisions. Time is altered to extend and test the narrative. As all the separate components move out of syncronisation with each other as a time delay is used to question our perception. The Negative space between the televisions changes our perception of time. The fan will engage the viewer to the movement of states. The random events will create the reality in the work. It will stop documenting and start performing. My films address the conception of time and documentation involved in today’s global culture.