Berlin-based American artist Casey McKee is a storyteller: his series-based work confronts deep truths about the societies we live in. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that his latest series titled Antimatter present a very grim picture following a solitary astronaut in what looks to be a post-apocalyptic world. Although McKee’s protagonist has also appeared in his previous series, The Machine Stops, where he was depicted exploring a distant planet, in Antimatter he seems to have returned to earth only to be confronted by the same desolation, only this time, it feels much closer to home.
McKee’s unique three-step creative process, developed through trial and error, involves staging scenes, photographing them, printing them onto canvases and finally painting them over, blurring the line between reality and fantasy. For his latest series, McKee used an abandoned military barracks in the former East German countryside, not far from his studio. Whereas the previous series was a metaphor for the paradoxical alienation of our digitalized world, the artist’s latest work alludes to a more existential kind of danger derived from the threats like global pandemics, climate change and social unrest. The series is on view at Frankfurt’s Galerie Greulich until September 2, 2020.
