By David Pagel
May 15, 2015
If ants had cameras—as well as helicopters, drones and hydraulic lifts—they might make photographs that look a lot like Edward Burtynsky’s sublime pictures of the marks humans have made on our planet.
These include massive dams, mines, wells and farms, alongside quarries, irrigation systems and flood control plains. At Von Lintel Gallery, the Canadian photographer, who has traveled the globe to make his stunning images, invites visitors to see humanity as a species—not as unique individuals who stand out from the crowd, but as indistinguishable, and very small, components of a much larger whole—like ants in a colony.
That’s a fascinating perspective, partly because it flies in the face of the way we usually look at art—as an embodiment of the singular genius of singular geniuses—and partly because it gets us to look at the big picture: our global economy in which some fundamental resources—like water, air and food—may not be able to sustain the rate at which humans have been reproducing. What that means for life as we know it is the subject of Burtynsky’s panoramic landscapes.
Beauty and ugliness, nature and industry, exist cheek-by-jowl in his crystal-clear pictures. Some are hellish, their glistening lakes of radioactive oil bleeding from the Earth like a toxic wound that won’t heal. Others are gorgeous, their snow-capped peaks and steep ravines so breathtakingly vast that they make human beings seem inconsequential.
Most are both. A drone’s-eye view of a dam under construction on the Yangtze River presents an entirely manmade landscape that looks utterly alien, like a concrete spaceship so far out in the galaxy that it’s impossible to tell up from down, left from right, right from wrong. Shot from helicopters, two views of terraced mountainsides, where Chinese farmers grow rice, show what daily labor adds up to when it’s done over centuries.
Above all else, Burtynsky’s pictures are humbling. Sober and sensible, they make it clear just how little individuals can do on our own while suggesting that as a group we have a lot to learn from ants.
Read more @ LA TIMES
Von Lintel Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of large-format color photographs by renowned photographer, Edward Burtynsky. the photographer is known for his incisive look at landscapes reshaped by human interference. Nature Transformed primarily culls from Water, a five-year project chronicling the dramatic effects of manufacturing and consumption on the world’s most vital and rapidly depleting resource. Science fiction-esque irrigation plots in Texas, ancient carved stepwells in India, and geometric rice terraces in China are translated in vivid color and crystalline detail from upwards of 7,000 feet. The aerial perspective necessarily brings into focus the massive scale and impact of these systems employed to redirect and control water. “I document landscapes that, whether you think of them as beautiful or monstrous, or as some strange combination of the two, are clearly not vistas of an inexhaustible, sustainable world,” Burtynsky states. “We have to think more long-term about the consequences of what we are doing, while we are doing it. My hope is that these pictures will stimulate a process of thinking about something essential to our survival, something we often take for granted—until it’s gone.”
Also on view are images depicting the pitch black Volcanic sands of Iceland, marking Burtynsky’s return to pristine wilderness for the first time in over thirty years, and photographs from the Oil series: rectilinear rigs in Asia and tar sands operations in Alberta, Canada
Exhibtion runs: April 25 -June 20, 2015
Read original article @ Juxtapoz Magazine
Editor’s Note: The Paris Photo Los Angeles fair held last
weekend was one we unfortunately couldn’t attend in person, but we
asked Carol Lee Brosseau to gather up her image
highlights as a proxy for actually walking the halls ourselves. Carol
Lee is an LA-based art advisor, appraiser, and former gallery director
at Joseph Bellows Gallery (her site is here).
We’ve known Carol Lee for the better part of a decade, and she has
always had an uncanny ability to understand our eclectic eye for work.
While she has been able to highlight images that fit into our personal
collection with surprising consistency over the years, the choices and
comments below are her own. -LK
By Carol Lee Brosseau / In Art Fairs / May 5, 2015
Paris Photo! In Los Angeles! On a New York back lot!
To me, Paris Photo LA at Paramount Pictures Studios is one of the
most fun art fairs to attend. The relaxed and entertainment-driven
atmosphere is a welcome antidote to the often hectic grind of other art
fairs. While the majority of galleries are set up in booths on the
larger sound stages, several galleries and the book dealers are set up
in the “brownstones,” “shops,” and “cafés” of the New York City street
back lot. The result is essentially a faux city where guests can go
door-to-door, just like gallery hopping in Chelsea. It’s like The Truman Show…with photographs.
Visitors snack on tacos from food trucks and sip wine or beer on any
one of the “New York City stoops,” chatting, people watching, and celeb
spotting. The outdoor spaces and sunny LA weather make the fair quite a
pleasant place to be.
This year there are 80 galleries and book dealers from 17 countries.
The inclusion of so many international galleries is nice as they offer
fresh work not often seen in LA. The fair is heavy on contemporary
photography. There are some vintage photographs and older work sprinkled
around, but the vast majority of the work is medium to larger-scale
contemporary.
Missing from the fair are a lot big names in photography, referring
to both dealers and photographers. (Galleries such as Gagosian and
Fraenkel, who have participated in past years, were absent this year.
And it’s been a while since I’ve been to a photo fair with out seeing an
Eggleston.) I couldn’t help but think it would be nice to have more
classic photography and more of the staple photo dealers there to give
context and to balance out much of the newer work and younger galleries.
But I suppose when you’re standing in a temporary plywood room just
inside a brownstone façade on an artificial New York street in Los
Angeles, the need for context has already been eliminated. And it is in
fact refreshing to see so many new galleries and new work represented.
All in all, Paris Photo LA is a great way to spend an afternoon or a
weekend and see lots of art. Here are some of the highlights for me.
Read original article @ Collector Daily
