Exhibition Announcement
Curator’s Statement
Baltimore-based artist Chris Bathgate is a self-trained
machinist. He utilizes handmade tools and automated CNC (computer numerical
control) milling and drilling machines to create precisely-crafted elements
that assemble into complex sculptures.
Machining is his method of artistic expression. He has spent
more than fifteen years adapting metalworking machinery from salvaged and
repurposed equipment. Bathgate’s aesthetic considerations stem from the very
machines that he uses to create his sculptures. Each piece that he makes is
informed by the one it is preceded by, and he modifies his machinery
accordingly—not for improved practical function but for the aesthetic
developments that can be produced.
Bathgate is unique in his formalist approach to precision
machining as an art form. His entire body of work is an ongoing investigation
into this concept. Process lies at the heart of his practice and it serves as the
primary catalyst for his ideas. He evaluates his sculptures for form and visual
composition in a continuous cycle of ideation, problem solving, fabrication, analysis,
and revision, similar to systems engineering. Bathgate’s carefully composed
technical diagrams are evidence of his gestaltist outlook in which the whole may
be deconstructed into its elements.
Playing with the tension between aesthetic vs. utility, form
vs. function, and industrial vs. handmade, Bathgate’s interdisciplinary work
lies at the intersection of art, craft, and design. It serves as an example of
how computer-mediated fabrication may bridge the divide between art, craft, and
industrial production in the Digital Age.
This exhibition is curated by Ron Labaco and organized by
Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences.