Confronted with the work of Markus Raetz, one can’t help blinking and rubbing one’s eyes. For twenty years Raetz has explored the act of seeing in what has become an astounding obsession. This makes for a queerly reflexive viewing experience; the subject matter of Raetz’s work is the gaze—the very means by which the work is absorbed.

A worldview that never goes beyond one’s own eyeballs makes a certain amount of sense; it’s a view that remains true to the receptors that brought the material to the brain in the first place. Raetz draws hands reaching into the head through eye holes or depicts a