Santa Fe, NM – With an acute sensibility toward color and shape, exemplified in her photographs by an appreciation for the abstract aspects of nature, Diane Burko captures the brilliance of some of the world’s most dramatic geology and extraordinary domains while conveying her affection for the environment and appreciation of its fragility. Investigations of the Environment opens September 26 with an Artist Reception from 5 –7 pm, and will be on view through November 2, 2014. The exhibition of Burko’s gripping photographs of compelling landscapes provides a unique opportunity for visitors to experience nearly inaccessible regions of this world from the point of view of someone intimately connected to them.
For 40 years Diane Burko has traveled to the far reaches of the planet, including recent trips to the Antarctic and the Arctic Circle, taking pictures of fantastic natural landscapes and topography. Putting aside political debates and instead concentrating on the emotional response to the images, Burko uses this unprecedented access to the ends of the earth to call attention to the facts of climate change and express the urgency of environmental consciousness.
Yet despite her environmental preoccupations, aesthetic concerns remain in the forefront of her practice. Burko says “The goal is to seduce with the beauty I encounter and at the same time remind the viewer of the fragility of our natural world.” Originally a large-scale painter, the influences of color and spatial organization guide her lens into the “close examination of the multifaceted, intricate structures of nature, movement and light in real time.” In addition to her work involving climate change in the world’s poles, this exhibition features photographs from Bucks County, PA;the Everglades; Yellowstone National Park; Hawaii Island; and Montana’s Glacier National Park.
Burko’s relentless pursuit of the monumental –and her corresponding disregard for personal peril when, for example, photographing through the open doors of helicopters or from the precipice of jagged cliffs–produce dynamic views of sublime landscapes and has prompted her work to be described by The New York Times as “landscapes on the edge, or at least beyond our usual experience... it’s hard to imagine more extreme landscapes than these.” In her fearless explorations, Burko has emerged as a kind of visual archeologist in search of the most soulful denouements in the earth’s physical evolution. She embraces nature’s rugged reality while communicating its unabashed beauty.
Diane Burko’s artistic reputation is well-established with an extensive exhibition history that includes the Art Institute of Chicago, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Tang Museum, Aldrich Museum, James A. Michener Art Museum, Philadelphia Academy of the Arts, Woodmere Art Museum, National Academy of Sciences and Princeton’s Bernstein Gallery at the Woodrow Wilson School, and most recently a solo exhibition at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University. Her works are held in numerous private and public collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Delaware Art Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
