About James Casebere

James Casebere was born in 1953, in East Lansing, Michigan. He attended Michigan State University and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, from which he graduated in 1976 with a BFA. In the fall of 1977, he attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York and received an MFA from Cal Arts in 1979.

Casebere's pioneering work has established him at the forefront of artists working with constructed photography. For almost 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. Casebere's abandoned spaces are hauntingly evocative and oftentimes suggestive of prior events, encouraging the viewer to reconstitute a narrative or symbolic reading of his work.

While earlier bodies of work focused on American mythologies such as the genre of the western and suburban home, in the early 1990s, Casebere turned his attention to institutional buildings. In more recent years, his subject matter focused on various institutional spaces and the relationship between social control, social structure and the mythologies that surround particular institutions, as well as the broader implications of dominant systems such as commerce, labor, religion, and law.

www.jamescasebere.com

About Rima Yamazaki

Rima Yamazaki is an independent documentary filmmaker specializing in contemporary art and architecture. Her practice is an exploration of cinematic expression in documenting, studying and reflecting on the arts. She works as a one-person film crew; all her films are directed, photographed and edited by herself. Her films have been shown at various film festivals and venues internationally. She received a BA in Social Sciences from Hitotsubashi University (Japan) in 2005, and a BA in Film from Hunter College (NY) in 2008. She currently lives and works in New York.

www.rimayamazaki.com