Cut Flowers by Oisín Byrne
SO Fine Art Editions are pleased to present Cut Flowers by Oisín Byrne, an Irish artist, writer and filmmaker based in London. This new series of screenprints continues his exploration of scale, bold colour, floral form, gesture and the passing of time, and will also open at Connolly, London, on 1 May 2026.
Moving fluidly between painting, film, performance, sound and text, Byrne describes his studio practice as a dialogue between focused, reflective work and instinctive mark-making, often exploring the shifting boundaries between conscious thought and intuitive gesture. His studio itself reflects this split: upstairs is used for filming, editing, teaching and reading, while downstairs is for painting and drawing – Byrne describes his process as a movement between states of mind. After sustained periods of research or concentration, he returns to drawing with urgency, driven to capture the immediacy of subjects before they shift or disappear.
Flowers have become central to this process. Observed closely in the studio, they shift constantly, forcing the artist to work quickly. Tulips at the end of their bloom, with stems outstretched in what Byrne calls a “final curtain call”, hold a particular fascination. The Cut Flowers screenprints of Dahlias were conceived as a sister set to the triptych of Irises from 2023, extending that earlier edition’s exploration of scale, chromatic intensity and floral form. Rather than standing apart as a discrete suite, the Dahlias were imagined in dialogue with the Irises – their saturated petals and emphatic outlines designed to converse across the wall. In this way, the editions encourage combination, much like cut flowers gathered from different locations and held together in a single arrangement.
As writer Wayne Koestenbaum notes, Byrne’s flowers “seduce at first sight: their keen colours out-pop Warhol’s blooms. Oisín’s posies, like Andy’s, are inanimate, but they stream with mobile life, like a dancer whose flight Mallarmé might have tried to reproduce in a clause that never lands.”
Born in Dublin in 1983, Byrne studied at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, and Goldsmiths, University of London. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Salzburger Kunstverein, Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, Kunstinstituut Melly, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, EVA International, Paris Internationale, and Princeton University. In 2024 he presented smell the book at Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute, his first solo exhibition in Scotland, featuring paintings inspired by historic Gaelic and Irish texts alongside sound and film works. His writing has been published by Pilot Press, Ma Bibliothèque, Eros Press and Bookworks, and he has collaborated with artists and writers including Dennis Cooper, Isabel Nolan and Ghalya Saadawi.
This event is part of the new citywide initiative ‘Dublin by Dusk’ and is kindly supported by the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport.
