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Moskowitz Bayse is pleased to present Doubting Thomas, a three-person exhibition bringing together work by Aaron Elvis Jupin, Mike Kelley, and Tony Matelli. Conceived as a tightly structured conceptual dialogue rather than a thematic group show, the exhibition examines doubt not as negation, but as a mode of attention.

The title invokes the biblical figure who required proof through contact, an image and allegory that lingers in cultural memory as both cautionary tale and quiet endorsement of verification. In this exhibition, doubt is neither cynical nor defensive; it is methodological. The works assembled here operate in the interval between recognition and certainty, where perception is tested and belief is deferred.

Across painting, sculpture, and image-making that flirts with illusion, the exhibition’s three artists each stage a different kind of slippage between what is seen and what can be trusted. Mike Kelley’s Hidden Profile introduces doubt not simply as a perceptual phenomenon but as a mischievous destabilization of the very categories through which we tend to interpret images. The work appears, at first, to stage a familiar art-historical problem: the gradual emergence of figuration from abstraction. Yet Kelley’s strategy seems less interested in resolving that tension than in ridiculing it, albeit with a snicker. 

Jupin’s paintings of masks and webs activate the allegory through a subtle, wry instability of appearances. The images often greet the viewer with striking clarity, where objects hover in luminous, pared-down pictorial fields, seemingly presented without complication. Yet the longer one looks, the less secure that initial legibility becomes. The paintings produce a peculiar double condition, simultaneously crisp and elusive, so that vision itself becomes a site of uncertainty. What first appears direct, slowly reveals itself to be strangely indeterminate. 

Tony Matelli’s sculptures introduce a subtle but insistent uncertainty into the gallery space. His sculptures confront the viewer with objects that appear indistinguishable from reality but in the work Arrangement, something is decidedly and obviously off kilter. This precise gesture to skew anatomy is uncomfortable to behold and activates a nearly physical skepticism in the viewer. In a very literal way it is begging to be touched or prodded to verify something our eyes cannot believe. In this context, Matelli’s invitation dovetails with Kelley’s destabilization of image-reading and Jupin’s slow erosion of pictorial certainty. 

Together, the three artists refuse the comfort of recognition: Kelley turns interpretation into a sly trap, Jupin suspends perception, and Matelli creates an almost tactile skepticism. Their works do not simply represent doubt, but choreograph it, turning the viewer’s desire to confirm, prod, and look again into the central drama of the exhibition.

Across media, Doubting Thomas proposes that doubt is not a lapse in conviction but a generative force, both in the act of creation and interpretation. It keeps meaning provisional and the encounter with art vitally unfinished. Rather than offering affirmation, the exhibition sustains a productive instability, foregrounding the viewer’s impulse to verify, test, and look again. In a cultural moment saturated with images and immediate conclusions, these artworks insist on hesitation. If belief has historically been framed as an endpoint of perception—seeing is believing—this exhibition suggests another possibility: that some of the most electric encounters with art occur precisely in the interval before certainty arrives.

A special thank you to the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, Hauser & Wirth, and Tony Matelli Studio for generously supporting this exhibition.