James Casebere in the 2010 Whitney Biennial

Sean Kelly Gallery is pleased to announce that James Casebere will be included in the 2010 Whitney Biennial. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Biennial, this iteration of the eponymous exhibition has been co-curated by Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari.

James Casebere will be represented by two large new photographic works entitled Landscape with Houses (Dutchess County, NY), #1 and #2. For the past year, Casebere has envisioned and constructed an elaborate, complex model, his most ambitious and indeed, largest to date. The idea for the new model came from the desire to revisit the subject of the American suburb, which Casebere first explored in the early eighties in a work entitled Subdivision with Spotlight, 1982 (see above image). The Landscape with Houses works offer a vision of the "American dream" as it exists today in residential neighborhoods across the country. An array of houses, different in color, size, style, and character, is bathed in a glorious elegiac early morning light in #1, in soft, illuminating moonlight in #2, and is symbolic of the Post-modern transformation of rural communities into residential subdivisions. One cannot help but wonder about the hopes and fears, and the recent fragility of lives embarked upon when entering into home ownership and ones' own piece of the American dream. Expanding upon the exploration of his earlier work, Casebere probes the relationship between artifice and representation, illusion and fantasy, compelling the viewer to suspend judgment, engage the imagination, and perceive the drama inhabiting these seemingly uninhabited spaces.