EDWARD BURTYNSKY THE CHINA SERIES
Edward Burtynsky, Manufacturing #17, Deda Chicken Processing Plant, Dehui City, Jilin Province, China, 2005 chromogenic print, 58 x 68 inches. Courtesy of Charles Cowles Gallery, New York
EDWARD BURTYNSKY THE CHINA
SERIES
September 16 to
November 5, 2006
ILLUSTRATED LECTURE by Ed Burtynsky, Tuesday, October 10 at 12:30 pm at Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour Street. Admission is FREE
RECEPTION FOR THE ARTIST
Tuesday, October 10, 7 pm at Presentation House Gallery
WESTERN CANADIAN
PREMIERE
Wednesday, October 11, 9:45 pm at Empire Granville Theatre Cinemas #3.
The feature documentary Manufactured Landscapes screens as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival. The artist will be in attendance.
Over the past two and a half decades, internationally acclaimed Toronto photographer Edward Burtynsky has explored the globe, documenting sites irrevocably transformed by industrial activity. His images of
quarries, mines, railcuts, oil refineries and shipbreaking are powerful depictions of human endeavor and incursions into the earth. Burtynsky’s alluring and richly detailed images achieve a disturbing eloquence—and gothic sublimity—through compositional clarity and rigorous attention to detail. Presentation House Gallery is pleased to present The China Series, an exhibition of twenty large-scale, newly completed works from the artist’s recent trips to China. These include an important series depicting the controversial Three
Gorges Dam Project, by far the world’s most extravagant and intrusive engineering feat, where over 1.2 million people have been displaced and eleven cities razed. The exhibition also features cinematic depictions of China’s burgeoning cities and industrial labour force, photographs whose formal geometries and tight organizational symmetries bring to mind the ambition—and polarity of meanings—of work by filmmakers such as Leni Riefenstahl and Fritz Lang.
Ed Burtynsky was born in St. Catherines, Ontario in 1955. His work has been featured in exhibitions around the world, and was recently the subject of retrospective exhibition organized by the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2003), touring to the Finnish Museum of Photography at Cable Factory, Helsinki, Finland, The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario, and The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York. The artist is represented by the Charles Cowles Gallery, NYC and Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto.
Media contact
Diane Evans, 604-986-1351 and
devans@presentationhousegall.com
Edward Burtynsky will be available for interviews on Tuesday, October 10 and Wednesday, October 11th in
Vancouver
Edward Burtynsky: The China Series was organized by the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston Salem, North
Carolina.
WESTERN CANADIAN PREMIERE:
Manufactured Landscapes is a feature documentary on the work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Director Jennifer Baichwal follows Burtynsky through China as he photographs the country’s massive industrial revolution. Produced by Mercury
Films Inc. (Nick de Pencier, Jennifer Baichwal) and Foundry Films Inc. (Daniel Iron), in co-production with the National Film Board of Canada (Peter Starr, Gerry Flahive).
PRESENTATION HOUSE GALLERY, 333 Chesterfield Avenue North Vancouver, BC
V7M 3G9 604.986.1351
http://www.presentationhousegall.com