In corso all’M9 – Museo del Novecento di Mestre, “Extraction / Abstraction” è una mostra antologica che celebra gli sguardi sul nostro mondo – e anche sul nostro Paese – del fotografo e regista canadese.
Photographing between sky and earth to reveal the interface between humans and nature on this planet, capturing the radical transformations that increasingly force us to confront the consequences of our actions – such as waste management and the impact of climate change caused by pollution, intensified industrialization, mining, and intensive agriculture through deforestation, groundwater depletion, and pesticides. The goal is to encourage empathetic observation from the viewer, impressed by the vastness of new and old horizons, by the distant and close-up perspectives that reveal details otherwise invisible without magnification. This approach creates unique views of natural and artificial alterations in the Anthropocene era.
This is, in summary, the perspective of Canadian photographer and documentary filmmaker Edward Burtynsky, whose retrospective exhibition celebrates forty years of his career at M9 – Museo del ‘900 in Mestre. In an inseparable blend of aesthetics and content, the exhibition is divided into two main sections, Extraction / Abstraction, designed by the architecture firm Alvisi Kirimoto. Large panels display around eighty large-format photographs and ten murals. In the “Process Archive” room, technical tools, cameras, drones, and the short film Where I Stand reveal the “behind the scenes” and travels that shaped Burtynsky’s realistic and artistic portrayal of landscapes captured in ultra-high definition. The introduction to the exhibition in M9 Orizzonti room includes the award-winning immersive multimedia projection In the Wake of Progress (2022).
Burtynsky’s gaze also turns to Italy, depicted in images from a photographic campaign commissioned by the Sylva Foundation on the effects of the environmental disaster caused by Xylella on Puglia’s olive trees. Industrial production, with its robots, automation, and alienated workforce, plays a central role in the serial “industrial sublime” of automobile and food factories across Asia and Africa. This theme flows through depictions of bridges, dams, roads, transportation networks, crops, and sewage systems, as well as massive piles of garbage. The journey moves from the neatly ordered goods at the Rotterdam Container Port in the Netherlands, reminiscent of Lego bricks, to the chaos of Nigerian sawmills surrounding the shantytown of Makoko, on the outskirts of Lagos. There, countless felled trees, even illegally logged, are bound like bundles of broomsticks at the mercy of the lagoon, while towering heaps of abandoned tires are burned in Westley’s American landfill in California, alongside mounds of plastic and metal debris in Nairobi, Kenya. In Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, crushed oil barrels resemble painted, stacked suitcases awaiting their fate—disposal or recycling. The golden depths of the Morenci copper mines in Arizona (the fourth most extracted metal in the world after iron, aluminum, and chromium) are as mesmerizing as the sterile “dowsing” waste from gold mines in Johannesburg, South Africa, and the methane and coal mines that, despite global warming, “sculpt” hills reminiscent of Morning Glory flowers in Ravensworth, Hunter Valley. From the slopes of the abandoned salt mines of Cadiz, with their winding marshes of turquoise seawater, we arrive at the deceptive beauty of the rainbow-colored oil bunkering, tracing iridescent psychedelic splashes in the Niger Delta.
Equally powerful is the surreal, fractured image of the volcanic silt from the Þjórsá River, Iceland’s longest glacial river, rich in hydroelectric plants. This shot rivals those of the radial dams of the South African diamond mines, like the “Big Hole” in Kimberley, or the once-mighty Colorado River, now dried out by hydroelectric dams and irrigation channels, which once flowed freely from the Rocky Mountains to California, leaving behind arid deserts. The colorful surface layers of rock, soil, and ecosystems covering the iron mines of Sishen in Kathu, South Africa, resemble tangles of wool threads and seeds, while the gray shadows of feet in Senegal’s salt flats appear like feathers, and multicolored ponds evoke gems or even precious Byzantine or Klimt-like mosaics. Then there are the gigantic “crop circles” from circular irrigation in Texas, allowing farmers to tap into underground water rather than rely solely on rainfall in the face of looming drought. It’s pure Land Art, as is the “Nautilus” effect or rose-like patterns created by combine harvesters in the potash mines of Russia, with silvery white and vermilion hues from ancient evaporated seabeds. Dryland farming in Monegros County, Spain, which follows the sustainability criteria of water management by adhering to wet and dry season cycles, shapes landscapes reminiscent of Dubuffet’s works.
One is led to wonder, as curator Marc Mayer, director of the National Gallery of Canada and the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Montréal, suggests, whether the great Abstract and Informal artists, who focused on the study of form, structure, and color, and were long accused of no longer knowing how to draw or paint according to Realist standards, were in fact visionaries anticipating, through the power of their minds and hands, the new experiences linked to macro and microscopic photography. Art and Technology can coexist with Humanity—unless we return to reckoning with Nature, created by God. An alternative critical perspective to ponder.
