Real Estate #911714 1991

Henry Wessel made this photograph of a house in the USA, and, as the title suggests, the work is a comment on the property market. Wessel's artistic process feels deliberate but off-the-cuff. His compositions are thoughtful, yet, like a snap-shot, there's a casualness that makes you feel like anyone could do this. But it's this very quality that makes his work so compelling! In ‘Real Estate #911714,’ the house, bathed in the pastel light of a summer afternoon, is rendered in cool greens and off whites. These hues are both inviting and, somehow, distancing, adding to the sense of surreality. It is an image rooted in the everyday, yet it possesses a detached quality, which anticipates the work of artists such as Roe Ethridge. Wessel shows how we find beauty in the mundane. It's about seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary, and I love that!