Mar 282023
 

“Oil Bunkering #9, Niger Delta, Nigeria”, 2016

“Gold Tailings #1, Doornkop Gold Mine, Johannesburg, South Africa”, 2018,

“Salt Ponds #1, Near Fatick, Senegal”, 2019

“Salt Ponds #1, Near Fatick, Senegal”, 2019 (detail)

“Uranium Tailings #13, Husab Uranium Mine, Namibia”, 2018

Edward Burtynsky’s photographs are visually arresting and often made more so by the need to look closer to discover what exactly is being captured. Some look like paintings at first glance before you realize there are roads or other man made structures contained within them.

From the Sundaram Tagore’s press release-

Since the early 1980s, Edward Burtynsky has been photographing industrial landscapes across the globe, documenting in remarkable detail the human imprint on the planet through terraforming, extraction, urbanization and deforestation. For African Studies, premiering in New York simultaneously at Sundaram Tagore Gallery and Howard Greenberg Gallery, he focused on Sub-Saharan Africa, traveling to Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Madagascar and Tanzania between 2015 and 2020.

Burtynsky’s interest in Africa was sparked 20 years ago while he was working on his landmark 2004 photographic project China, which explores the country’s rapid globalization and the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. The series, and subsequent award-winning documentary film by Jennifer Baichwal, Manufactured Landscapes (2006), chronicle China’s transformation into the world’s leading manufacturer and depository for its waste. Burtynsky witnessed firsthand the immense environmental—and by extension, human—cost of development, and he predicted Africa would be the next, and perhaps the last, region to undergo major industrial expansion.

Presented in large-format photographs, African Studies conveys the fragility of the natural world, bringing together images of lush, undisturbed landscapes and environments irretrievably altered by industry. The series was largely photographed from aerial perspectives, a viewpoint that distills the continent’s diverse topography into graphic patterns and gradients of sumptuous color. The resulting effect seemingly transforms the marks of human infrastructure into painterly abstract compositions. In these images, as in all his work, Burtynsky skillfully integrates critical reporting with sublime visual aesthetics creating a harmonious balance between content and form.

“With this project I hope to continue raising awareness about the cost of growing our civilization without the necessary consideration for sustainable industrial practices and the dire need for implementing globally organized governmental initiatives and binding international legislations in order to protect present and future generations from what stands to be forever lost,” Burtynsky said.

Also on view in another section of the gallery are works from his series, Natural Order. The photographs were taken in Grey County, Ontario, during the lockdown in the spring of 2020.

This quote from Burtynsky was on the wall nearby in regards to the series-

“From the frigid sleep of winter to the fecund urgency of spring, these images are an affirmation of the complexity, wonder and resilience of the natural order in all things. I find myself gazing into an infinity of apparent chaos, but through that selective contemplation, an order emerges an enduring order that remains intact regardless of our own human fate.”

This exhibition closes 4/1 at Sundaram Tagore Gallery and 4/22 at Howard Greenberg Gallery.

 

Feb 222023
 

Robert Yasuda, “Boundary” 2010-2020

Robert Yasuda, “Boundary” 2010-2020 (detail)

Robert Yasuda, “Pele”, 2022

Robert Yasuda, “Pele”, 2022 (side view)

Robert Yasuda, “Maluhia”, 2022

Robert Yasuda, “Pipeline”, 2022

Currently at Sundaram Tagore gallery in New York are Robert Yasuda’s sculptural paintings for his exhibition Transparent and Translucent.

From the gallery’s press release-

The artist’s latest body of work is a culmination of his decades-long exploration of perception, light and space. On view will be a series of atmospheric paintings rooted in his early encounters with nature in Hawaii where he was born and raised.

Yasuda’s iridescent paintings are composed of translucent veil-like fields of color layered on slabs of wood that protrude from the wall or nestle into corners. Several works are constructed to cast a reflected glow of colored light into the surrounding space. Depending on where you stand, the surfaces of the paintings shift in color and temperature.

“For many people, looking at a painting for 20 seconds can be extremely long but these are pieces that reveal themselves over time,” says Yasuda, who invites viewers to pause and immerse themselves in the work in order to perceive these subtle transformations.

Yasuda begins by shaping wooden panels, which are up to two inches thick, with chisels and grinders. Softening harsh vertical lines, he introduces bowed and gently sloping edges as well as sharply upturned corners. After painting a base layer onto the wood, he wraps the wood in diaphanous cotton. Adding as many as 40 layers of pearlescent acrylic paint, he suspends the fabric amid layers of luminous color. Most of his works are multi-paneled, with intricately wrought and detailed seams, and mounted on cradle-like structures that push them away from the wall.

Several of the works on view feature aqueous expanses of rich blues and lush greens evoking the ocean. In other pieces, sensuous swathes of paint evoke sunsets or the iridescent lining of seashells. “My entire childhood I saw myriad greens in the countryside of Hawaii and I spent a great deal of time diving…These works are connected with that point of view and the process of meditating on nature,” says Yasuda.

This exhibition closes 2/25/23.