NEW YORK, NY.- Using fabric and other found objects, Eric N. Mack creates richly textured compositions that collapse the boundaries between fine art, fashion, and architecture. The artist identifies as a painter working in the medium of fabric, although his works frequently move away from the walls to synthesize painting with sculpture. Mack’s first one-person exhibition at Paula Cooper Gallery opened on November 3, following the announcement of his representation in 2021 and his inclusion in four group exhibitions since 2020. In the past year, Mack has completed residencies at the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, and the American Academy in Rome, and his site-specific installation Sarong is currently on display at Palazzo Grassi, Venice, through January 2024 as part of the group exhibition Chronorama Redux.

The centerpiece of Mack’s forthcoming exhibition will be a mobile-like hanging structure suspended from the ceiling and draped with swaths of multicolored fabrics. Propelled by the idea of a classical fountain, the materials flow like water in a self-sustaining cycle. Regeneration is significant to Mack’s process, which breathes new life into overlooked materials gathered from Italian couturiers, international marketplaces, and the streets of Harlem where he lives, employing excess and scarcity in his accumulation and combination of disparate parts.

A series of abstract assemblages will adorn the gallery walls. Constructed and arranged by Mack, the works are paintings in found fabric that sustain the physicality of each material. Mack considers the collection of fabrics in each work to function like an archive, preserving and presenting his chosen materials while drawing attention to how they age. Fine silks, suiting, and graphic prints jostle and jive, taut in some places and gently curving in others­­, their relative softness and saturation, heft or weightlessness, complementing a wide spectrum of vivid color.

Eric N. Mack (b. 1987, Columbia, MD) received his BFA from The Cooper Union, NY and his MFA from Yale University, CT. Mack is the recipient of prestigious awards and residencies including the Chinati Foundation’s Artists in Residence Program (2023); the Rome Prize (2021-2022); the Kaleidoscope Residency, Milan (2018); the inaugural BALTIC Artists’ Award (2017); the Rauschenberg Residency, Captiva Island, FL (2017); the Delfina Foundation Residency, London (2017) and the Studio Museum in Harlem Residency (2014-2015). Institutional one-person exhibitions include Scampolo!, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin (2022); Lemme walk across the room, Brooklyn Museum, NY (2019) and NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, FL (2021); In austerity, stripped from its support and worn as a sarong, The Power Station, Dallas, TX (2019); and Vogue Fabrics, Albright–Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY (2017). Mack’s work is in the collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Rhode Island School of Design, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.

Paula Cooper Gallery
Eric N. Mack
November 3rd, 2023 - December 16th, 2023