The path to all-encompassing digitality

Thomas Bayrle (*1937) addresses fundamental aspects of modern society in his art: How are religion and society, the individual and the masses, industrially manufactured products and the technical apparatus used to produce them connected? Since the 1960s, he has been innovatively exploring consumption, urbanity, technology, and pop culture, which have had a profound impact on society, as religion once did. Bayrle's artistic position is based on the repetition and interconnection of individual elements and the citation of famous works of art by Michelangelo, Caravaggio, and Claude Monet, among others. The Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt is dedicating a major solo exhibition to Bayrle with 55 works, including paintings, graphics, sculptures, sound installations, and a video work. The focus is on works from the last 20 years. Thomas Bayrle – Be Happy!, curated by Matthias Ulrich, runs from February 12 to May 10.

Bayrle first completed an apprenticeship as a machine weaver before turning his attention to commercial art and printmaking during a three-year course at the Werkkunstschule Offenbach (now the Hochschule für Gestaltung). He continued to use the printing techniques he learned there, both materially and conceptually, in his art, which describes the path from analog technology to today's omnipresent digitality. In 1961, together with the painter, graphic artist, and sculptor Bernhard Jäger (*1935), he founded the Gulliver Press, which existed until 1966, establishing Bayrle as a publisher of artists' books. The artist has participated in documenta in Kassel three times over a period of almost 50 years (1964, 1977, 2012) and has won numerous awards, including the Arnold Bode Prize in 2012.