BURTYNSKY: Extraction / Abstraction

Edward Burtynsky's largest exhibition to date is now on view in Mestre (Venice), Italy through January 2025!

The largest exhibition of Edward Burtynsky’s career, BURTYNSKY: Extraction/Abstraction, is currently featured at M9 Museo del '900in Mestre,just outside of historic Venice, Italy.The exhibition first opened at Saatchi Gallery in London to stellarreviews including from the Financial Times,which called the show “a visual and conceptual tour de force”and featured it as one of their four unmissable photography exhibitions worldwide.

Curated by Marc Mayer, former director of the National Gallery of Canada and the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, with installation design byAlvisi Kirimoto, the exhibition featuresover 80 large format photographs, 10 high definition murals, one experience of Augmented Reality and a new section, called Process Archive, which shows the instruments and cameras used over the years by Burtynsky during his tireless navigation around the world, including those drones that allowed him to further enlarge the lens of his cameras.

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The Museum second-floor corridor displays nine photographs from the photographic campaign commissioned from Burtynsky by theFondazione Sylva in 2022 to bear witness tothe effects of the Xylella fastidiosa bacterium on Apulian olive trees—an environmental disaster that allows the viewer to grasp and concretely measure the effects of climate change on Italyas well.

The exhibition also featuresBurtynsky’s multimedia piece, In the Wake of Progress, co-produced by Canadian music legend Bob Ezrin and including an award-winning musical score by the late Canadian composer Phil Strong featuring vocals by Cree Métis artist iskwē. The piece made its world premiere as a takeover of all of the digital screens in Yonge-Dundas Square with Luminato Festival Toronto in 2022.