News

"Eye Contact" at Moskowitz Bayse
Los Angeles - September 15th- October 19th 2024

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 "Palm To Poplar: Devotional Labor"
at The Shaker Museum Feb 3 - April 28 2024

Caitlin MacBride on WAMC

Caitlin MacBride in Chronogram

Hyperallergic: 5 Shows to See In Upstate NY

Times Union: Three exhibits at Kinderhook Knitting Mill Explore transcendence, materiality

Whitehot Magazine Recommends

Caitlin MacBride "Dyeing Notes" at Deanna Evans Projects
October 28th - December 17th 2022

Keeping Things Whole at North Loop
Sept 10- Oct 30 2022

"Reading and Making" with Abattoir Gallery
At Foreland, Catskill, NY

NADA x Foreland
Showing with Zoe Fisher Projects
August 28-29, 2021

Remnant Artifact Flow at Thierry Goldberg Gallery
January 8- February 7, 2021
Justin Chance, Tony Chrenka, Doris Guo, Jeffrey Joyal, Molly Rose Lieberman, Caitlin MacBride, Bri Williams

Design and Ideology Panel Discussion at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), Berlin Germany
"Lost In America"

Conversation between Alexander Alberro, Dan Graham, Caitlin MacBride, Cameron Rowland, moderated by John Miller

Design is seen as something that is objective, built, and physically manifested in the world, while ideology is assumed to be subjectively, mentally, and immaterially constituted. This panel discussion on the occasion of the exhibition Lost in America will focus on the similarities and interconnections of these two fields. Alexander Alberro, Dan Graham, Caitlin MacBride, and Cameron Rowland will join John Miller to discuss the influence ideology has on the production of goods in the United States and how the country’s manufacturing power has led to certain ideologies such as Fordism, American exceptionalism, and isolationism. The discussion will also address how the dialectic between design and ideology is being shaped by the Information Age and a global climate crisis that is becoming ever more acute.
https://www.nbk.org/en/diskurs/designandideology.html

"Lost in America" at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), Berlin Germany

Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville - Artist In Residence Lecture

TITLE Magazine - Washing Rituals by Caitlin MacBride
Click For Link

"Useless Flowers" at Fisher Parrish Gallery
Caitlin MacBride & Sam Stewart
February 21 – April 5, 2020 - EXTENDED INDEFINITELY

Forty years ago, it was contrary to the “orders” which governed our lives to cultivate useless flowers, but, fortunately for those of us who loved them, there are many plants which are beautiful as well as useful. We always had extensive poppy beds and early in the morning, before the sun had risen, the white-capped sisters could be seen stopping among the scarlet blossoms to slit those pods from which the petals had just fallen… The rose bushes were planted along the sides of the road… but it was strongly impressed upon us that a rose was useful, not ornamental
– Sister Marcia Bullard, 1906

Fisher Parrish Gallery is pleased to present Useless Flowers, a two-person exhibition of paintings and sculptural works by New York artists Caitlin MacBride and Sam Stewart.

The form of a bonnet is a point of common connection for MacBride’s oil paintings and Stewart’s sculptural lamps. In Useless Flowers, each artist focused on bonnets worn by the Shakers, a radical Christian sect that embraced craft, equality, frenetic worship, and celibacy. The bonnet itself, popular in the 19th century to denote modesty, often physically functioned as blinders for the wearer. Popular culture of the time often subverted the bonnet’s original use, redesigning them as flamboyant frivolous attention grabbers. The Shakers however, in keeping with everything they made, had strict guidelines for bonnet designs. When wearing a bonnet, the gaze is obscured for the wearer and those who wish to see them. The separation of public and private is controlled by the bonnet’s wearer, as is the choice to delineate oneself physically and spiritually from others.

MacBride’s oil paintings explore soft tensions in sewn fabrics and twisted ropes. The intricacies of Shaker bonnets and old colonial beds mix with painterly expanses of color. Exploring the space where form abandons function, MacBride’s work binds the intimate to the structural. Using the grid as a bridge between the art historical and the everyday, the work engages pleats, gathers, and woven structures to overlay high and low. Texture and construction are analyzed in the painting process for a closer look at analog labor and handmade object-hood. Through the depiction of soft materials, the tension of passionate restraint is explored.

Sam Stewart’s lamp pieces emit a warm light, evoking the bonnet wearer’s interior life and simultaneous public presentation. Using meticulous craftsmanship, Stewart’s lamps blur the lines between practicality and absurdity. Although Stewart’s source material tends to be specific and carefully researched, the objects themselves reflect a liminal space that allows the viewer to forego reality. The fabric lampshade retains a permeability that elicits a visceral bodily relationship to this household object. Spaced throughout the gallery at a familiar height, Stewart’s lamps stand among us, becoming part of our own community.

Fisher Parrish Gallery: Useless Flowers
Caitlin MacBride and Sam Stewart

"Table Manner" at Hesse Flatow
Anthony Iacono, Sacha Ingber, Caitlin MacBride
508 W 26th Street, Suite 5G
New York, NY 10001
www.hesseflatow.com

HESSE FLATOW is pleased to present Table Manner, showcasing the collaged paper works of Anthony Iacono, the multi-material sculpture and wall works of Sacha Ingber and oil paintings by Caitlin MacBride. While the materials and subject matters are diverse, each artist asserts a meticulous control over the materials used, while allowing the content of the work to behave as the expressive quality of the work. MacBride’s figure-absent settings, Ingber’s sensual-teasing surfaces and Iacono’s tension-filled collages all seem to reveal an anonymous partner. A focus on imagery of handheld objects, tools or furniture spans all three artists work. Using motifs from interiors or domestic settings, Iacono, Ingber, and MacBride all create backdrops that act as cues for the setting of a stage. Objects appear as animated as the social cues and characters that create a moment.

Freehand Fellowship 2019
The Freehand Fellowship includes a grant, programming budget, housing in the hotel, three months of exclusive access to the hotel’s rooftop artist studio, and opportunities to curate public programs and exhibitions in the hotel.
Stay tuned for info on Caitlin MacBride's events and programming!

The Amy Beecher Show Podcast
Interview with Caitlin MacBride
Click HERE To Listen

"You Want It Darker" with Michael Blake at Jack Barrett
(formerly 315 Gallery)
October -December 2018

Maake Magazine
Feature and Interview : Click Here

Excerpt From Maake Magazine:
Do you find that this has an erotic component at all? The idea of painting as a space and expression for longing can feel, in some ways, like an exploration of desire. Maybe it’s the link in my mind between the two words—longing and desire.
Yes, definitely. I think I shifted to this way of working at some point because I realized it was a more sustaining way of being an artist for me. For a while I’d been thinking of my work in terms of planning and executing pieces. Like any affair you can lose the passion pretty quickly that way. Audre Lorde wrote in The Erotic As Power: "The erotic is a measure between our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. .....Within the celebration of the erotic in all our endeavors, my work becomes a conscious decision—a longed-for bed which I enter gratefully and from which I rise up empowered." Rising from your bed empowered is a pretty wild feeling as a woman or an artist. It’s what I shoot when I’m approaching my work. A relationship where I can be both generous and empowered and feel that the painting is as well.

You wrote that, “through an examination of an individual object I hope to break through the riff of otherness and practice empathy upon that which is outside of myself.” Do you find that you are attempting to create a bond between you and the exterior object, to find shared space and what is both shared and what is profoundly different?
I think it goes back to the Elaine Scarry quote. I want to be able to connect with the object I’m painting, to explore a relationship to an object. In some ways it’s like the study of a fetish, what is the root of a deep connection to an object, or body part, or texture. I’m really interested in the concepts of the transitional object or the transformational object. There’s similarity between the two and I’m interested in exploring that kind of psychoanalytic read on art making. Like can we find something outside ourselves that will help transform us while we also transform it. I want to explore what it is to encounter that which is outside our body. In early childhood your first massive realizations are about everything not being part of your body. Which is so fascinating to think that our original impulse is that everything is part of us. As we get older most children experience a transitional object as a literal thing that gives us an emotional connection or relief. I think this is so similar to experiencing art.

It feels as though there are elements of self-discovery in your work, via your deep, personal connection to it. Would you agree or disagree with that?
I’ve been trying to work on this being a more personal connection lately. Much of my work with the Met’s archive I saw as a collaboration with whichever craft person or artist had originally made the object I was painting. A year or so ago I decided to pursue my own history a bit more through objects and archives. I’m from a New England working class family. There was a lot of religion and strong beliefs about work ethic passed down from my family. I think there’s an interesting complexity to these ways of living—like yes there was a good deal of restriction but also a true dedication to craft and community. I think a lot about ways to be an artist and also be an activist and fight for progress. I think there is a lot of talk these days of identity art for POC, women, and queer people. Yet, really everyone has an identity, it’s just that being white and male are generally seen as the default. I wanted to look at the way my background and identity has functioned in history and currently. There are different levels of otherness or privilege that all somehow live in one body. I started using the Shakers as a stand in for what I saw a lot of in my own family history. The focus that went into their object making and intentional living was amazing. I’ve mostly been painting Shaker furniture for the past 8 months and I’m currently writing these responses from a residency at the New Lebanon Shaker Village. It’s a really magical place here. The land has been home to many different groups with utopian ideas for communal living.

This leads me to ask about the idea of expressing who is looking at the object, and how they are seeing it. The words ‘seeing,’ or ‘looking.’ Do you enjoy the process of simply looking at what you are trying to understand, and do you find that there is an element of power in looking at something and being able to translate it into expression?
I do like to think about the way objects are looked at, but at the same time, I honestly don’t think too much about the audience that will eventually see my paintings. It sets up a lot of blocks for me to worry too much about how they will be seen or what people will want out of them.But when I’m deciding how to portray an object I definitely think about the different ways it can be looked at and therefore seen in a truer way. Part of my photo project at the Slater Museum was about the seeing of those Greek and Roman statues. The museum had edited their viewing because it didn’t conform to current norms or overall to the straight male gaze. I was interested in cropping the photos to give the feel of another eye viewing the casts – both the bodies portrayed and the casting lines that showed how they had been made. The more current work of painting furniture is a bit about reframing the domestic craft to be given a different context within art. Painting occupies such a different place than functional objects. The Shakers were also amazing pre-cursers to modernism, the design and simplicity is amazing.Earlier this year I painted a series of bonnets. All early American bonnets. The ones The Met owned were so beautiful and luxurious and I was curious about the way a bonnet both hides one’s appearance and obscures the view of the person wearing it. They were originally made popular when women would go out in their carriages and wanted to maintain a sense of modesty. Yet, their popularity inevitably became about drawing attention to the wearer. I thought they functioned as curious objects in the way that they were meant to protect a woman’s good name but ended up keeping her from having any peripheral vision.

One River Hartsdale
"Transitional Objects"
Hartsdale, NY
September 2018 - November 2018

Camayuhs
"Different Registers"
Caitlin MacBride, Sarah Tortora, Derrick Velasquez
Atlanta, GA
September 8th, 2018 - October 6th, 2018

Daddy's Books is a reading room curated by artists Caitlin MacBride and Lauren Faigeles at
Life Lessons Garage in The Rockaways, NY

More Info: Click Here

Pilot Projects
"The Midnight Sun"
June 9th - July 6th 2018

Mother Gallery
The Cruellest Month
April 14 through June 30, 2018

Alyssa Davis Gallery
"In Congruence"

Commissioned postcard through Primary Information
Designed by Caitlin MacBride
an ode to Audre Lorde's poem "Power"
click for info and to buy

"WHEN WHAT THEY SUNG FOR IS UNDONE" - CAITLIN MACBRIDE AND LIZZY MARSHALL
SOLOWAY GALLERY , BROOKLYN, NY

Offshore Residency August 2017: Penobscot Bay, Maine
Click here for more

SQUARES BY ARTISTS: Caitlin MacBride for PeaceMeal
Caitlin MacBride's paintings as wearable scarves for all sorts of seasons. Scarves in all sizes in silk cashmere, twill, and georgette. 25% of proceeds will got to the YASPAT Orphanage in Bekasi, Indonesia.
See the look book and order a scarf here : https://peace-meal-shop.com/#caitlin

BEHOLDER'S SHARE - GROUP SHOW
315 GALLERY, BROOKLYN NY

NO REGRETS - GROUP SHOW
THE LEROY NEIMAN GALLERY, New York, NY

Paintings used as inspiration for Phelan Spring'17
Click here for Link to Vogue Review

COLLABORATION WITH PHELAN FOR SPRING '17
PAINTINGS USED AS PRINTS
VOGUE
W MAGAZINE
DAZED

https://www.vogue.com/article/spring-2017-ready-to-wear-fine-arts-trends

GOOD WEATHER GALLERY presents "LANDS' END", MIAMI
Miami, FL December 2016
Good Weather has positioned pieces of a boat dock on the shore as platforms and partitions with an exhibition that considers the gallery’s relationship with this geological edge and is caught up in the physiological effects from the current emotional deluge to the political crisis that we find ourselves in.