Featuring: NYFA Hall of Fame Honoree James Casebere

On April 12, 2016 NYFA is honoring James Casebere at the annual NYFA Hall of Fame Benefit  

This year’s honorees are NYFA affiliated artists James Casebere (Fellow in Sculpture ’89, Photography ’85, ’94), Anna Deavere Smith (Fiscally Sponsored Artist ’16), Faith Ringgold (Fellow in Painting ’88), and Zhou Long (Fellow in Music Composition ’00). Stay tuned for posts spotlighting each honoree.  

James Casebere, Fellow in Sculpture ‘89, Photography ’85, ’94
Casebere’s pioneering work has established him at the forefront of artists working with constructed photography. For the last forty years, Casebere has devised increasingly complex models that are subsequently photographed in his studio. Based on architectural, art historical and cinematic sources, his table-sized constructions are made of simple materials, pared down to essential forms to create ambiguous, evocative, and surreal environments. Devoid of human figures, the resulting images invite viewers to project into and inhabit the spaces, relying on their imagination and memory to fill in the gaps and create a context and narrative in which to understand the images.

Casebere is the recipient of numerous fellowships, including several from the National Endowment for the Arts, from the New York Foundation for the Arts and from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. His work is collected by museums worldwide, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; the Los Angeles County Museum; and the Victoria and Albert Museum and Tate Museums in London, England, among many others. In 2016 Casebere will be the subject of two important survey exhibitions, at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, curated by Okwui Enwezor, and at the BOZAR/Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels, Belgium. Both exhibitions will be accompanied by catalogues.

Casebere’s Landscape with Houses explores the mortgage crisis and American perceptions of suburbia. Learn more about this work at the artist’s Whitney wiki page from the 2010 Whitney Biennial and in this New Yorker article, “Little Boxes”. Casebere shared details about his process and influences in this conversation with Mark Godfrey and Greg Hilty about his 2011 solo show, Credit, Faith, Trust at Lisson Gallery.

Find out more about the NYFA Hall of Fame Benefit and buy tickets by clicking here.

Images, from top: James Casebere, photo credit: Giorgia Fanelli; James Casebere (Fellow in Photography ‘94), Georgian Jail Cages; James Casebere (Fellow in Photography ‘94), Panopticon.