Photos By Gail

“I visited a Ferrero chocolate factory, and it was incredible: millions of pieces of chocolate just churning out,” Thomas Bayrle once recounted. “It was absurd and somehow funny, but also terrifying and sublime in its vastness.” This sense of awe is conveyed in many of Bayrle’s works, in which he interlaces and repeats a single image to create a complex larger whole – an approach informed by his early training in weaving.


Installation View with Peter Saul’s Icebox Number 9 (1963)

Borrowing from the world around him, the artist often creates these patterns, using images of mass-produced objects like cars, machines, and common household objects. Here, Bayrle’s  Cups Wallpaper (1967) takes a simple cup and multiplies it to produce a visual effect that borders on dizzying.

Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.