Veld 12, Noordoostpolder, Flevoland, The Netherlands

If the artistic tradition of colour field painting is an apt comparison for much of Burdeny’s aerial work, his Tulips series brings the term to a new, much more literal place. The rhythmic fields of the Noordoostpolder tulip farms in the Netherlands are here seen at the height of spring harvesting season. And while Burdeny did attempt to document the rare site with a drone (whose bird’s-eye perspectives grow increasingly popular as the technology grows more accessible), it was a chartered helicopter that eventually granted him the control of the subject that he needed to achieve the exacting framing of the meticulously colour-coordinated tulip patches. Of course, within the seemingly perfect symmetry of the horizontal flower rows are small perpendicular variations—a carefully placed break in the [row], the encroaching shadow of a nearby tree, or the horizon-cutting blades of a wind turbine—elements that for a moment restore our vision to the impressive, even startling reality that serial patterns are human-grown. Burdeny brings the colour field tradition into both high relief and reduced, symmetrical, and satisfying flatness, a contradiction foundational to his other work, to his signature minimalism-by-abundance.