David Burdeny | City on a Hill

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David Burdeny, "Tangier 02, Morocco," 2023

Courtesy of the Gallery.

OPENS Thursday March 2nd 5pm - 8pm (with artist in attendance)

Kostuik Gallery is pleased to present City On a Hill, the latest photographic series by Vancouver-based artist David Burdeny. Taken over multiple trips to Italy, France and Morocco in 2021 and 2022, the artist has released 19 new images available in 4 limited edition sizes ranging from 21 x 26 inches/26 x 21 inches to 59 x 73.5 inches/73.5 x 59 inches.

“For the past 15 years I've increasingly moved away from landscape work, to photographing cities, architecture and built environments along nature's periphery. City On a Hill is an evolution of that process.  

After years of working with conventional perspective as a way to represent space, I was interested in an alternative method that was more sympathetic to the unexpected ways in which people adapted to and reconfigured these unique environments. Photographed in Italy and Morocco, they were captured with a medium format digital camera fitted with a super telephoto lens. The resultant image compresses the city's depth into a two dimensional surface revealing the interconnectedness between its structures and the invisible actors that generated it.  

There is evidence of humanity in some of the frames while others are empty - people, laundry and the occasional car hint at the internal logic of what appears to be random. However, what the participant misses when moving through these spaces, and what I sought to reveal in these images, is how the towns developed over time with purpose. Each developed organically, built up of cells over time into a larger more complex whole.” - David Burdeny, 2023

BIOGRAPHY Vancouver, Canada, based David Burdeny has exhibited with the Jennifer Kostuik Gallery since 2001, showcasing his images from the world over, including Antarctica, Iceland, Brazil, China, Burma, Cambodia, France, Italy, Canada and the USA.  Known for his finely composed photographs, David Burdeny has spent the past 20 years exploring a variegated photographic Landscape ranging from minimal seascapes, ornate European interiors to abstract aerial images. Widely collected in Canada, the USA, Asia and Europe, the sheer beauty of David’s images has firmly placed him within the realm of Canada’s most sought after photo-based artists. David’s willingness to take risks, eschew dogma and continuously pursue his innate curiosity for new subjects and themes has become a signature element in his work. Be it mounting a camera beneath a self -built drone, shooting from the deck of an Antarctic bound icebreaker or waiting for an ocean tide to advance, David faithfully imbeds his own formal signature into each and every image further expressing a life long passion for the built environment and the camera’s interpretation of it. Distinctly David Burdeny, the photographs are rigorous yet graceful, inviting the viewer to form their own narrative as if they too were passing through the space or gazing into the horizon for the very first time.