McCaslin's art suggests an electrically empowered space or closed power society eventually becomes its own timeless creation. His sites simulate life and stop there. They exist to power whirling fans, lights, clocks, videos and boom boxes which strip suggestions of breath, heartbeat, sight and sound down to the wires. In these spaces things are powered yet lifeless, detached yet interconnected. Time is in endless supply and constantly measured but has nothing to do with seasons, or time of day.
Images repeat endlessly suggesting natural processes trapped by their representation.
In a way the cool poetry of McCaslin's art lies in this very utility. Even as he generates questions he rekindles wonder at the way things connect, power up and just plain work. It's the very grounded, working class perspective of an artist who worked as an electrician. While it may be informed by a thick dose of the disillusionment pervading the century, it still exults in the fact that things can work. The surprise is that the sub-architectural fragments and power vessels he uses mirror so fully the complex hidden structures of the society which fashioned them.