Diane Burko: Traces of Change (FotoFest 2016 Biennial)

Cindy Lisica Gallery presents the exhibition Diane Burko: Traces of Change. Opening Reception: Friday, March 18, 6-8:30PM. On view through April 16.

Traces of Change is a solo exhibition by Diane Burko, featuring recent large-scale photography, painting, and photo-based media at Cindy Lisica Gallery, which on the occasion of this exhibition is a participating space in the Fotofest 2016 Biennial.

For over 40 years, Diane Burko has investigated monumental and geological phenomena both on the ground and from the air. She observes the world from open-door helicopters and Cessna aircraft with cameras and sketchpads.

Burko’s artistic practice is situated at the intersection of art and science and focused on issues of climate change. In the past year, she has participated in expeditions to Antarctica and the Arctic Circle, producing thousands of photographs from the air, sea and ground.

Burko has discovered compelling and seductive beauty resulting in a masterful body of work from years of study and collaboration with glacial geologists throughout the world.

For the Deep Time project, images are based on the artist’s January 2015 expedition to the Patagonian Ice field of Argentina. Burko contrasts the concept of the deep past with the immediate present in perhaps her most metaphoric and abstract endeavor to date.

This exhibition also presents the “Elegy Series” with printed works that allude to fictional aerial views based on enlargements of details from her paintings. The powerful images are informed by the geological knowledge that she has garnered through study during her many polar expeditions. The works serve as elegies identifying locations threatened by climate change.

About the artist: Diane Burko (b. 1945, Brooklyn, NY) is an American painter and photographer currently based in Philadelphia. She graduated from Skidmore College in 1966 and completed her MFA from University of Pennsylvania in 1969. Burko’s work has been widely exhibited internationally, and she has received a number of impressive awards for her fine art, including the WCA/CAA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011.