Art Openings 10/26-10/29: Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, Howard Greenberg Gallery, Robert Mann Gallery, threewalls Gallery, LVL3 Gallery

The renowned contemporary photographer Edward Burtynsky is the subject of two exhibitions opening in New York this week. First, opening tonite at Bryce Wolkowitz gallery is Burtynsky's newest project Dryland Farming. Created in the remote Monegros region of northeast Spain, his photographs show us a landscape of fertile patchwork farms woven amongst ragged gypsum foothills.

Dryland Farming #30, Monegros County, Aragon, Spain. 2010
© Edward Burtynsky

In his typical fashion, Burtynsky photographs these areas from above, rendering them into abstract fields of line and color made vivid through the immense scale of his prints. What becomes clear is a certain juxtaposition between the rich natural beauty of the region versus the human desire to harness the power and bounty of the land.

Dryland Farming
photographs by Edward Burtynsky
opening Wednesday 26 October
6-8pm
Bryce Wolkowitz gallery
505 W. 24th Street, NYC

During this show, Wolkowitz gallery is also partnering with Howard Greenberg gallery, who will concurrently be hosting a retrospective exhibition of photographs from the span of Burtynsky's 25-year career -- providing a long view of the artist's repeated examination of man's impact on the environment and the relationship between industry and nature.

Retrospective of the works of Edward Burtynsky
opening Thursday 27 October
630-830pm
Howard Greenberg gallery
41 E. 57th St., 14th floor, NYC

In another NYC exhibition that also touches on the human ecological footprint, Robert Mann gallery premieres The Machine in the Garden, from photographer Jeff Brouws.
Training his camera on everyday subjects such as highway vistas and shopping plazas, Brouws has forged his own long career by photographing the vernacular American landscape of his time (much a la Walker Evans). His book Approaching Nowhere -- a visual critique of suburban sprawl and the subsequent loss of a sense of place -- stands as a personal favorite of mine.
In his recent body of work The Machine in the Garden, Brouws turns his attention to the forgotten legacy of the railroad industry -- perhaps somewhat romantically yearning for a time and way of life outside of (or completely removed from) the dominance of the car-centric lifestyle and development models so pervasive today.

from the series The Machine in the Garden
© Jeff Brouws

Drawing his inspiration from Leo Marx's book The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America, Brouws worked within a 10-mile radius of his home in upstate New York to document the visual remnants and clues of the train lines that used to criss-cross the rural landscape there. His photographs weave together a narrative about a historical era when railroads (instead of cars and highways) delineated space and tied communities together -- but also hint at a larger dialogue about the effects of technology on rural areas.

The Machine in the Garden
photographs by Jeff Brouws
opening Thursday 27 October
6-8pm
Robert Mann gallery
210 11th Ave., 10th floor, NYC

Elsewhere, in Chicago this Friday, threewalls gallery opens the group exhibition Voices from the Center, a multiform project featuring works by Central European artists who tackle the notion of life in their respective countries before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The show includes art by Janeil Engelstad, Grafixpol, Oto Hudec, Magda Stanova, Miklos Suranyi, Matej Vakula, and Tehnica Schweiz.

from the series Weekend Houses
© Miklos Suranyi

The project initially grew out of Engelstad's conversations with former dissidents, artists, writers, teachers, politicians, and villagers throughout post-communist Central Europe, as they discussed their hopes, dreams, and fears about their lives, their country, and the world.
Their answers become the central tenet of the exhibition as it illustrates the circumstances of people caught in transition between two distinct political and cultural eras. It then becomes an important question of how this transition affects their daily lives -- or, more succinctly: was life better before or after the Berlin Wall?
Considering the vast number of Central and Eastern European ethnic groups present in the Chicagoland area, I'm sure this will be a very poignant exhibition.

Voices from the Center
opening Friday 28 October
6-9pm
threewalls gallery
119 N. Peoria St., #2d, Chicago

Last but definitely not least, on Saturday nite LVL3 gallery in Chicago opens the exhibition Real Space, a partnership with the ACRE Residency featuring the works of Alyse Ronayne, Bryan Lear, Dan Bradica, and Zak Arctander.
Each artist begins their process with standard materials and forms and then re-contextualizes them to spawn a transformation into something entirely new and unfamiliar. For example, consider Bradica's images of his constructed interventions into the natural landscape, where he introduces man-made objects and, thru precise sculpture, challenges our standard perceptions of the environment.

© Dan Bradica

Real Space
opening Saturday 29 October
6-10pm
LVL3 gallery
1542 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago