Casemore Gallery presents Raymond Meeks: Assemblage, on view from 19 September to 14 November 2026, an exhibition of photographs made over eighteen months at an abandoned worksite in Cranesville, New York. The show transforms detritus from a welding and wood shop into compositions that question how meaning is constructed from what others leave behind.
Raymond Meeks discovered the site after four years living nearby, stumbling upon structures tucked away in the woods when access suddenly became possible. What followed was an occupation that consumed three years of work. He arranged utilitarian relics—scraps of metal, weathered wood, forgotten tools—into provisional sculptures, then photographed these temporary assemblages before they returned to ruin.
The installation extends beyond wall-mounted prints. Photographs rest in book cradles and on rough wooden tables, mingled with actual debris from the Cranesville site. This presentation choice collapses the distance between image and object, bringing the past into the gallery space with tactile immediacy. Scattered among the new work are selections from earlier series, including Halfstory Halflife and The Inhabitants, establishing thematic continuity across Meeks' career.
The work draws on Russian Constructivism's interest in building new realities from available materials, though Meeks redirects that impulse toward memory rather than utopia. His prints, whether in color or black and white, demonstrate command of traditional techniques while incorporating transparencies, varied papers, and used book pages. The results feel both crafted and found, echoing the labor of unknown workers whose discarded materials become collaborators in the images.
Meeks, a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow based in the Hudson Valley, has built a reputation for books and photographs centered on place and possession. His sixth laureate status in the Immersion commission brought exhibitions at ICP New York and the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris. At Casemore, he advances a quieter proposition: that making something beautiful from rudimentary objects is itself an act of connection, a way of honoring those who worked here before the camera arrived.
Image: Raymond Meeks, studio view, 2026 © Raymond Meeks, courtesy of the Casemore Gallery
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