For over 40 years, Canadian artist Edward Burtynsky has been documenting humanity’s impact on the planet, through large-format photographs echoing the feel of abstract paintings. Until 12 January, the M9 museum in Venice will be hosting an exhibition entitled “BURTYNSKY: Extraction/Abstraction” – a monumental retrospective reflecting the scale of the artist’s undertaking.
Edward Burtynsky grew up in St. Catharines, a blue-collar town in Ontario, where his imagination was shaped by industrial landscapes and vast man-made edifices. His early passion for photography led Burtynsky to study graphic arts and photography at college, which he paid for by working summers in a General Motors factory. From the outset of his career, Burtynsky’s perspective was naturally drawn to industrial complexes, which over the decades has taken him to the four corners of the globe, from the USA to China, from Madagascar to Nigeria and from Russia to Indonesia.
The M9 (or 20th Century Museum) is paying homage to this remarkable and monumental body of work with the largest-ever retrospective of Edward Burtynsky’s career, being presented in Italy for the first time.
Exhibition curator Marc Mayer, formerly the director of the National Gallery of Canada and the Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, highlights the breadth of Burtynsky’s work through an exhibition design by the Alvisi Kirimoto architecture studio, offering visitors the chance to fully immerse themselves in these landscapes wrought by human activity.
In addition to 80 high-definition large format photographs and 10 mural photographs, the exhibition also offers an augmented reality experience, along with an immersive screening of the short film In the Wake of Progress(2022), which Burtynsky co-produced. The “Process Archive” section presents the various technologies and cameras used by the artist over the years, from medium-format film to digital cameras and then drones, with the resulting blend of shots enabling Burtynsky to create broad-scale photographs printed over entire wall sections. The exhibition also highlights a more local context: the 2nd-floor corridor presents 9 photographs commissioned by the Sylva Foundation in 2022, depicting the devastation caused by the Xylella fastidiosabacteria in Puglia’s olive groves; an environmental catastrophe illustrating the effects of climate change in Italy.
Over the course of four decades of photography, Burtynsky has worked tirelessly to spread awareness of our industrial era’s reality, enjoying special access to sites which are generally kept from public view. Working from raised platforms, cranes or even helicopters, he captures that which we do not see – the consequences of our insatiable appetite for energy and natural resources.
The power of Burtynsky’s work stems from its union of conceptual clarity, technical fluency, and carefully crafted and appealing aesthetics. Each image is the result of meticulous preparation, as the artist defines his messages and seeks out the most appropriate locations to convey them: from the world’s largest highway intersection to oil refineries resembling towering cathedrals, to the peaks and valleys formed by piles of plastic awaiting recycling. The more expansive the site, the greater its impact – in both conceptual and visual terms.
By photographing these vast industrial and agricultural panoramas, often from an aerial perspective, Burtynsky transforms the landscape into compositions evoking the paintings of Rothko or Pollock. The shapes and patterns of mines, quarries or fields are transformed into abstract motifs, in expertly composed images bursting with vibrant colour. For Burtynsky, this work is not about beautifying the ecological tragedy at hand; rather, it is about showcasing the duality of beauty and destruction, fascination and repulsion. The images’ visual appeal allows the viewer to become emotionally invested, awakening their awareness of the ecological and ethical dilemmas of our time.
Being familiar with the artist’s approach and sense of engagement, Taittinger is supporting the exhibition’s world tour via its Ars Nova philanthropic endowment fund. Following its memorable début at London’s Saatchi Gallery and the exhibition in Venice, “BURTYNSKY: Extraction/Abstraction” will be setting off to encounter new audiences, seeking to spread further awareness of humanity’s impact on our precious yet wounded natural world, whose protection is essential to our survival.