Eileen Quinlan

Eileen Quinlan (Boston, MA, 1972) lives and works in New York.
She explores the material boundaries of the photographic process by producing abstract images that are deeply grounded in feminist history, and the mechanics of presentation and consumption. Quinlan exposes the constructed nature of her medium by either mobilizing commercial photography techniques or manually altering the surface of the negative, making the hand of the artist appear and recede. The immaterial effects of our screenic devices, and their vertiginous flow of images, continuously frustrates our sense of touch, leaving us in a stupefied state where reality itself becomes fragmented.

She earned her MFA from Columbia University in 2005.

Eileen Quinlan has had several solo exhibitions, including Underwater / Eileen Quinlan at Granary Arts, Utah (2024); Doll Parts at Emanuela Campoli, Paris (2023); Acting Out Eileen Quinlan in collaboration with Melissa Gordon at Manifold Books, Amsterdam (2022); Down Dog at Vistamarestudio, Milan (2022); WAIT FOR IT at Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf (2019); My Eyes Can Only Look at You at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2009).

She has also been featured in numerous group exhibitions including New Directions: Recent Acquisitions at George Eastman Museum, Rochester (2024); Changes at Mumok, Vienna (2022); Invitational Exhibition of Visual Art at The American Academy of Arts and Letters, NY (2022); Warhol, People and Things at Casa São Roque, Porto (2022); One Collection: Two Scenarios at FRAC Normandie, Rouen (2021); Artist’s Choice: Amy Sillman — The Shape of Shape at the Museum of Modern Art, New-York (2020); Objects Recognized in Flashes, a significant group exhibition curated by Matthias Michalka at MUMOK, Vienna (2019); Passante, at Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2019) and in Tainted Love / Club Edit at Villa Arson, Nice (2019); Image Support at Bergen Kunsthall, Norway (2016); Always starts with an encounter: Wols / Eileen Quinlan, a two-person exhibition at Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens (2016); Collected by Thea Westreich and Ethan Wagner at the Whitney Museum, New-York (2015); New Photography 2013, curated by Roxana Marcoci at MoMA, New-York (2013); Eileen Quinlan & Matt Keegan: Y? O! G... A. a two-person exhibition at The Kitchen, New-York (2012).

Her artwork was showcased in the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, as part of the exhibition Viva Arte Viva, curated by Christine Macel.

Her work is in the permanent collections of MoMA, New-York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New-York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New-York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New-York; County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson; FRAC, France (Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain); The Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester; Auckland Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Brooklyn Museum, New-York.