An exploration of “large-scale industrial incursions into the planet” and the impact of human action on Earth’s ecosystems: this is the focus of Burtynsky: Extraction / Abstractionthe new exhibition on the great Canadian artist Edward Burtynsky which will be on display at the M9 museum from Friday 21 June to Sunday 12 January 2025.
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Curated by Marc Mayer, former director of the National Gallery of Canada and the Musée d’art contemporain of Montreal, with an exhibition design by Alvisi Kirimoto, it is the largest exhibition ever held on the photographer’s over forty-year career and, after the successful debut at the Saatchi Gallery in London, arrives in Italy for the first time.
After the exploit of Banksy. Painting WallsM9 suggests a new look at the great themes and urgent challenges of the present through the language of art and, for the second temporary exhibition of the year, the focus is now on landscape and climate change, in the interactions between man and environment.
The exhibition itinerary
The exhibition, in fact, investigates the environmental consequences of the industrial system: a theme that represents the distinctive code of the photographer, acclaimed in Italy thanks to the Anthropocene project of 2019, which then traveled around the world, always receiving enthusiastic reviews. In this new exhibition, thanks to the profound historical understanding of twentieth-century industrial processes, of the geographical and cultural contexts selected in his campaigns, Burtynsky invites viewers to look beyond those photographed places, beyond our experience and our expectations, to truly understand the human impact on the future of terrestrial habitats.
Burtynsky’s large photographs present themselves at first glance as fascinating and indecipherable backgrounds of colors and abstract shapes, which leave observers suspended in front of natural or anthropic objects that are often not immediately intelligible, but capable of attracting them into the work.
The exhibition itinerary is made up of six thematic sections that illustrate all the main fields of action of the Canadian photographer, with over 80 large format photographs, 10 enormous very high definition murals and some of the main photographic tools that made Burtynsky famous, including those drones which allowed him to further enlarge the lens of his cameras. To these are added further elements, integrated into the spaces of M9, the result of a conceptual dialogue between the exhibition and the Museum’s narrative on the social, economic and political transformations of the twentieth century.
In fact, in the second floor corridor, nine photographs will be exhibited from the photographic campaign commissioned to Burtynsky by the Sylva Foundation in 2022 to testify to the effects of Xylella on Apulian olive trees: an environmental disaster that allows us to grasp and concretely measure the effects of climate change also on our Village.
Finally, in the new M9 Orizzonti room, the award-winning short film will be screened in immersive mode for the first time in Italy In the Wake of Progress [Sulla scia del progresso] (2022), co-produced by Burtynsky together with the famous music producer Bob Ezrin and with original music by the late Phil Strong.
