It is under the same title, A late evening in the future, that the Frac des Pays de la Loire, the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, and the Australian Center for Contemporary Art (ACCA) independently presented individual exhibitions by Gerard Byrne : from July 5 to September 21, 2014 in Carquefou, from June 6 to September 13, 2015 in St. Gallen, and from October 8 to November 27, 2016 in Melbourne.
The exhibition at the Frac des Pays de la Loire, between retrospective and installation, brought together important works from the last ten years. The artist presented films as part of a site-specific installation drawing on the language of Minimal Art as well as romantic ruins and the theatrical scene. The vast exhibition space, covered in darkness, was structured by impressive walls leaning against each other that acted as projection screens. The projections, continuously on or off, brought them to life. The films were fragmented by an automated system as well as by the movements of traveling visitors. In the middle of the exhibition space was installed a replica of the white tree that Alberto Giacometti had created for the landscape of Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, in Paris. Like Beckett’s landscape, Gerard Byrne’s exhibition sought to create a mysterious twilight zone of memory, subject to random and subjective order.