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Galer�a Helga de Alvear: James Casebere - 27 May 2010 to 31 July 2010 Current Exhibition |
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James Casebere
Landscape with Houses (Dutchess County, NY) #1, 2009 |
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James Casebere Galer�a Helga de Alvear May 27th - July 31st, 2010 Opening hours: 11:00 - 14:00 and 16:30 - 20:30. Exhibition opening: Thursday May 27th 2010, 20:00. James Casebere (Michigan, U.S.A., 1953) started his career in the 1980's with his unique style of work , in turn earning him a position within the world of photography: ambiguous, evocative and mysterious interior images that, nevertheless, appear familiar to the spectator. Casebere builds models, always related to architecture, which he then photographs, of which the lighting plays a fundamental role. His work is premised on questioning photography as a classic documentary format. While realism is the essential characteristic that has traditionally distinguished photography from the rest of art manifestations, Casebere attempts to undermine this principle, while at the same time using it as a reading mechanism for the spectator. These are, indeed photographs, and, therefore, should be read as a witness of reality, but nevertheless, what we see is no more than a recreation. The artist reproduces an image, rather than an event: he is not so much interested in the actual fact however more so in the evocative capacity of an image which can become more powerful, provocative and much richer. The theatrical aspect of the images is related to the artist belonging to a generation which has been brought up under the influence of image in movement, of film, and also of television. Lighting, framing, the point of view, are heirs to that whole tradition, and they add up to the different layers of reading of the work. The act of photographing architecture is the means to focus the work on the human figure, even though it never appears in the pictures. The buildings are witnesses to an era or to a place (American interiors, or Hispano-Arabic buildings, respectively), related to states of mind or even to sensations (as is the case of asylums), and can even operate as a political stance (for example, the Guant�namo prison cells). In any case, the readings are never monolithic, but, rather, overlay one another. In a great deal of his production, interior spaces also appear flooded by great masses of water, which adds another element to the reading of the work. In his new exhibition in Galer�a Helga de Alvear, James Casebere presents two new series: the tunnels are derived from his stay in the Italian city of Bologna, criss-crossed by a great amount of tunnels from different historical periods. With references to Piranesi, but also to the organic and to the technological nightmare, these are spatially disturbing images. The other series, Landscape with Houses, reproduces landscapes from Dutchess County, near New York. This would be a perfect and ideal enclave for the American Dream: individual houses with split roofs, green gardens in pastel colours. But something seems disturbing, and breaks down the apparently idyllic view. These works were shown at the last Whitney Biennial, and immediately attracted the full attention of the critics, who saw in them the image of the collapse of the U.S. real estate market. But, as always, there are multiple layers in the reading of Casebere�s work, and the spectator is left wondering whether this is the collapse of the American Dream itself. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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