Talk:Casey McKee

does anyone know how I can change the title of this article to real "Casey McKee" (not "Casey mckee")? thanks. Gehirn22 (talk) 12:28, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Proposed expansion and update of article

Hello. I am Casey McKee, the subject of this article. Because I have a conflict of interest, I am not making these substantive changes directly and would appreciate review by an uninvolved editor.

The article is currently quite short and does not reflect the development of my work from photography-based mixed media to oil painting, or several more recent exhibitions. I have tried to prepare the proposed text below in a neutral, encyclopedic style and to rely on independent publications and institutional sources wherever possible.

I am proposing the following revised text:

Proposed lead

Casey McKee (born 1976 in Mesa, Arizona) is an American painter based in Germany. His work examines power structures, social hierarchy, consumer culture, technology, and contemporary social behavior, frequently using satire and absurdity.

Career and work

McKee began exhibiting in Arizona in the late 1990s and relocated to Berlin in the early 2000s. His earlier work combined photography and painting. He produced photographs and transferred or printed them onto surfaces including canvas, wood, and paper using photographic processes before working over the images with oil paint.

Businessmen and corporate imagery became recurring motifs in McKee's work. His 2005 series Corporate Warfare used figures in business suits and staged violence to address competition and psychological aggression in corporate culture. The National Arts Club in New York later acquired works from the series and has presented them in exhibitions drawn from its permanent collection.

A later body of work, Milking the Cashcow, placed business figures in agricultural settings and addressed the relationship between finance, exploitation, and the real economy.

In 2018, McKee exhibited The Machine Stops, a series combining photography and oil painting, at Space K in South Korea. The series used a solitary astronaut-like figure to address technological dependence, social media, identity, and alienation.

During the 2020s, McKee transitioned away from the photograph-based mixed-media process of his earlier work and began focusing exclusively on oil painting. In his later process, photographs and historical paintings are used as reference material rather than as physical components of the finished work. Compositions are developed as reference images before being transferred as drawings to canvas and painted in oil.

This later phase includes the series Disaster Selfie and The Aristocracy of the Imperishables. Disaster Selfie depicts people photographing themselves while environmental catastrophes unfold around them. The paintings use the contrast between posed self-presentation and disaster to address social-media culture, online validation, distraction, and environmental crisis.

The series was the subject of a solo exhibition at the National Arts Club in New York in 2025 and was subsequently included in the OpenArt Lausitz Biennale in Germany in 2026.

The Aristocracy of the Imperishables is another oil-painting series from this period. During a 2025 residency at Övelgönne 106 in Hamburg, McKee produced Master and Minions as part of the series, followed by an exhibition of The Aristocracy of the Imperishables there in February 2026.

McKee spent most of his professional career in Berlin before moving to the German countryside.

Exhibitions

McKee participated in UN/FAIR TRADE – Die Kunst der Gerechtigkeit at the Neue Galerie Graz, part of the Universalmuseum Joanneum, in 2007. He also participated in the fourth Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2011.

McKee participated in three editions of NordArt at Kunstwerk Carlshütte in Büdelsdorf, Germany: NordArt 2017, NordArt 2018, and NordArt 2021.

In 2017, his work was included in Body Language: Figuration in Modern and Contemporary Art at the Tucson Museum of Art. The exhibition examined contemporary figurative art through works drawn from the museum's permanent collection and selected loans.

In 2018, McKee and British painter Robert Fry were presented in the two-person exhibition Unpacking Ego at Space K in South Korea.

McKee has also participated in multiple editions of the OSTRALE Biennale in Dresden, including O21 in 2021, O23 in 2023, and O25 in 2025.

Collections

McKee's work is held in the permanent collections of the National Arts Club in New York, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (SMoCA), and the Tucson Museum of Art.

The National Arts Club holds works from McKee's 2005 Corporate Warfare series and has exhibited them as part of its permanent collection.

The Tucson Museum of Art's online collections database contains an individual object record for McKee's work, confirming its inclusion in the museum's collection.

I would appreciate an uninvolved editor reviewing the proposed expansion and implementing whichever portions satisfy Wikipedia's sourcing, neutrality, and biography-of-living-person standards.

Thank you. Caseymckee (talk) 12:49, 7 September 2026 (UTC) Caseymckee (talk) 12:49, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

References