ZOE BYLAND’S works of art are in the Sanziany Vienna Collection, Kornfeld Collection Vienna and the Arts and Culture Vienna Collection.
Byland has been awarded by the Fügerpreis Academy of fine arts Vienna, American Art Award 2015, Vienna Opera Ball Poster, Kardinal König Kunstpreis nomination, Strabag Art Award nomination and the New York Master of Art Award.
Zoé Bylands born in Bern, Switzerland in 1975 creates monochromatic paintings that fluidly search the boundaries between low- and high culture. Her paintings are based on elements of vintage photography, film noir, graphic novels and classical genres of art history. She combine the traditional and the contemporary, the classical and the subcultural. Byland lives together with her husband who is a screen writer and they share their fascination for drama and mise-en-scène.
Byland uses subjects from turn-of-the-20th-century portrait photography because they are a timeless style of representation. Disguises are another central aspect of the work. Her characters never fully reveal their identity; they retain a degree of secrecy. They protect themselves and are simultaneously visible and vulnerable.
(SU) In the monochrome big black and white acrylic works Zoé Byland uses both paint and airbrush techniques. It gives them a wonderful 'out of focus' effect, and as a viewer you undergo a strange sense of sharpness and depth.
The subjects of all time are still current today: to create paintings that speak for themselves and do away with the boundary between high and low culture, counterpointing an elite art world that closed itself off to pop culture and counterculture. In the past fifteen years, many artists have taken up this tradition and supplemented the formal language with new elements, loading it with new content. Although they may work with the most diverse techniques, such as the classical painting medium or computer software, one can find among them a common trend toward narrative, dream-like scenarios, and uncanny-dark romanticism.
© Silvie Aigner
Byland has been awarded by the Fügerpreis Academy of fine arts Vienna, American Art Award 2015, Vienna Opera Ball Poster, Kardinal König Kunstpreis nomination, Strabag Art Award nomination and the New York Master of Art Award.
Zoé Bylands born in Bern, Switzerland in 1975 creates monochromatic paintings that fluidly search the boundaries between low- and high culture. Her paintings are based on elements of vintage photography, film noir, graphic novels and classical genres of art history. She combine the traditional and the contemporary, the classical and the subcultural. Byland lives together with her husband who is a screen writer and they share their fascination for drama and mise-en-scène.
Byland uses subjects from turn-of-the-20th-century portrait photography because they are a timeless style of representation. Disguises are another central aspect of the work. Her characters never fully reveal their identity; they retain a degree of secrecy. They protect themselves and are simultaneously visible and vulnerable.
(SU) In the monochrome big black and white acrylic works Zoé Byland uses both paint and airbrush techniques. It gives them a wonderful 'out of focus' effect, and as a viewer you undergo a strange sense of sharpness and depth.
The subjects of all time are still current today: to create paintings that speak for themselves and do away with the boundary between high and low culture, counterpointing an elite art world that closed itself off to pop culture and counterculture. In the past fifteen years, many artists have taken up this tradition and supplemented the formal language with new elements, loading it with new content. Although they may work with the most diverse techniques, such as the classical painting medium or computer software, one can find among them a common trend toward narrative, dream-like scenarios, and uncanny-dark romanticism.
© Silvie Aigner
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