Caitlin MacBride
Eye Contact
September 14 - October 19, 2024
exhibition text
Moskowitz Bayse is pleased to present Eye Contact, an exhibition of new paintings by New York-based artist Caitlin MacBride. This presentation is the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery, and will be installed in our Viewing Room September 14 - October 19, 2024.
In Eye Contact, Caitlin MacBride shifts from her customary exploration of American craft to an innovative examination of ocular technology, probing the relationship between scientific advancement, observation, and art history through the prism of medical artifacts. The series of oil paintings on view delves deeply into the historical evolution of this technology, portraying seminal instruments from the field of ophthalmology; early iterations of the phoropter, ophthalmoscope, eye chart, speculum, glass eyes, and other pivotal tools are carefully laid out and rendered in each composition.
In a continuation of her scholarly interest in museum archives, MacBride’s paintings engage with the aesthetic and epistemological dimensions of visual perception. The artist integrates scientific and medical insights into ocular mechanics with relational color theory, optical illusions, and blurred effects. This synthesis fosters a dialogue that not only interrogates the historical and technical aspects of ocular instruments but also invites a reflection on the philosophical implications of vision and perception. By intertwining the mechanics of sight with aesthetic theory, MacBride creates a visual discourse that bridges the domains of art history and perceptual psychology.
This new body of work resonates profoundly with the artist’s own experience; when she was four she went cross-eyed, and underwent a series of medical interventions culminating in corrective surgery. Her early encounters with vision tests, eye patches, and neurological evaluations have profoundly shaped her understanding of visual language and its connection to truth. For MacBride, the act of seeing became intricately linked with her self-concept, profoundly influencing her approach to art-making. Her works in Eye Contact emerge as a reflection on how perception and identity coalesce, revealing a complex interplay between personal experience and expression.
Caitlin MacBride is an artist based in Hudson, NY. She has a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College. She has shown at Fisher Parrish, Heroes, Chapter NY, Real Fine Arts, Greene Naftali, Zach Feuer, Jack Barrett Gallery, Hesse Flatow, and Neuer Berliner Kunstverein among others. Her work has been written about in The New York Times, Modern Painters, Art Forum, New York Magazine, and Vogue.com. And she just recently had a solo exhibition at the Shaker Museum, From Palm to Poplar: Devotional Labor, in Kinderhook, NY.