James Casebere
Shou Sugi Ban Sculptures
July 20–October 13, 2024*Please note the Archive gallery open hours have ended for the season. You can still visit the James Casebere exhibition by scheduling a guided tour. Please get in touch with us at [email protected] to schedule your visit.
‘T’ Space is proud to present an installation of new sculptural work by James Casebere. This exhibition will be on view from July 20 – October 13, 2024 at the Archive Gallery, on the ‘T’ Space Reserve: 60 Round Lake Road in Rhinebeck, NY.
James Casebere’s work has addressed architecture from the start by building models to photograph. In the late ’80s, and early ‘90’s, Casebere built larger sculptural installations, but only recently has felt compelled to design new structures—first, specifically for photographs, and second, to imagine these new structures built in real space.
For this exhibition, Casebere will present a new series of large-scale wooden geometric sculptures that engage notions of synthetic nature: bio-design—or self-generating forms that suggest organic or inorganic growth. The impulse behind the sculpture was, for Casebere, partly about real life experience instead of on-screen, and the materiality, space, and use of light—crafting an analog experience that engages all the senses in a social context, similar to his Pavilion for 2 or 3 in Chatham, NY. These five sculptures were created for an indoor gallery or domestic space related to, but not participatory like the pavilion. Here, Casebere embraces the traditional vernacular Japanese method of wood preservation known as Shou Sugi Ban, and uses a sustainable bamboo plywood as the base material, constructing it out of planar surfaces, similar to the way he builds the original table-top models. While the burning creates a warm, soft, and organic surface instead of something cold and hard like steel, it refers to the destructiveness of fire, and hence, change over time. It seems to present both tradition, and technological innovation, past and future simultaneously.
The exhibition will open to the public during Upstate Art Weekend (July 20 – 21), and James Casebere will be present in the gallery to speak with visitors on Saturday, July 20 from 3-5 PM.
Casebere participated in the ‘T’ Space Virtual Public Residency Lecture Series, presenting further insight into his artistic practice. Recording available on our YouTube Channel.
There was a concurrent exhibition of James Casebere’s photographic work presented at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York City, on view from June 27 – August 2, 2024. Seeds of Time continues Casebere’s ever-evolving investigation of form at the intersection of architecture, sculpture, and photography, exploring three fundamental principles: biomorphic design, social responsibility, and environmental sustainability.