Dust Storm (Manter, Kansas)

Irish artist John Gerrard attended the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford University; The Art Institute of Chicago and Trinity College, Dublin. In 2002 he was awarded a Pépinières Residency at Ars Electronica, Linz, where he developed his first works in Realtime 3D. Using this technology, Gerrard creates hyperreal environments imbued with an unnerving serenity and the potential to change or adapt. Gerrard has exhibited extensively since 2000, including solo exhibitions at Modern Art Oxford; Void Gallery, Derry; Perth Institute of Contemporary Art; Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin, and the RHA, Dublin. Using the hyperreal qualities generated by simulation and video-game technologies, John Gerrard challenges the viewer with portraits of beautiful environments imbued with an unnerving serenity and sense that what we are seeing is perhaps too real, too slick. Gerrard creates these portraits or environments in three dimensions, forming a point at which sculpture and photography conflate, ceasing to exist as inert forms but rather instilled with the potential to change or adapt, mirroring that plasticity found in nature.