Eric Nathaniel Mack

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What is my work about?

My practice is inclined towards the radical. The critical point has to do with complacent norms that separate life from art; those norms too often function to frame the viewing of painting. My work operates within such norms to radically juxtapose and acknowledge what’s been reconstituted as felt and emotionally modern.
I empathize with the fragment, its origin being variable, as plain as it?s surface reads. Its potentiality is so great, so very urgent. There is longing in the form of the fragment, and ‘L? shape cut from cloth. Maybe it will be reunited with its floral remnant or mended with another as a great patchwork quilt. Or maybe it could be a practical choice in patching a hole in ones crotch to better protect ones privates.
To make a fragment from a whole is an act of desecration, an act of violence. A compelling pierce into the canvas to show that its objecthood is hollow and that the canvas is architecture. Allowing the edges to be visible as they fray-as material truth.

 

Artist Statement

The appropriation of kinetics in my work intends to urgently enact a viewer’s empathy. Honey Hollow is a moving blanket that uses acrylic paint and hollowed golden grommets. Honey Hollow is conditioned to undulate in the presence of an industrial fan. The image is not static but active. The performed reverberation of the picture plane speaks to a condition of change. Honey Hollow is like an extension of a peace baring olive branch that is quickly retracted. Not a trick but with true intention of enacting a viewer’s empathy. 

The undulation mimics the act of breath. A persistent drone of the fan meets the tap on the surface of the blanket making contact with the wall.

 A stabbing has occurred, gunshots fired. At least 16.

This fragment is contingent on its need to stay alive.

A will to live

Heal the wounds 

or is it dead? 

A blanket with holes in it seems to hold uselessness.

A fragment to relate or to expose.

You can frame the wounds, hold them in time. 

The moving image made out of shots and therefore this image is made with shots.

I refuse to believe in perspectival space. I look out everyday and I internalize it through the act of breathing in and out.  

I believe in porosity and the horizontal plane.

Perspective is an imperial singularity, an apprehension of space and object with only the excuse of technological understanding. Orthogonal projection, understood not like rays of light, but a daub of transparently golden honey placed in the center of a honeycomb.

 

CV

Education

2014  Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME

2012  MFA Yale University

2010  BFA The Cooper Union

2008 Yale at Norfolk Fellowship

 

Exhibitions

2014

To do as one would, David Zwirner Gallery, New York

That’s The Neighbor Always Dressing These Bolders In The Yard, curated by Torey Thornton, Suzanne Geiss Company, NYC

Ben Horns and Eric N. Mack, Elaine Levy Projects, Brussels, Belgium

Project Space at Jeff Bailey Gallery, NYC

Home, curated by Jasmine Helm

Morris-Jumel Mansion, Upper Manhattan, NY

If this is Left, WHAT is Right?

ROSS IANNATTI, ERIC MACK, AND JESSE WINE

Kate Werble Gallery, NYC

 

2013

THIS IS THE PRISM THE SPIDER AS IT WEAVES ITS WEB, curated by Ben Horns, Signal Gallery, Brooklyn NY

 11/16/13, Organized by the Visual Communications Department, Violet’s Cafe, Brooklyn, NY

Will Laughlin and Eric N. Mack, Anna Kustera Gallery, NY

 Deep Cuts, organized by Wendy White and David Humphrey,

Anna Kustera Gallery, NY

 

2012

Fore, organized by  Assistant Curators, Lauren Hayes and Naima J. Keith and Exhibition Coordinator, Thomas Lax, The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY

Pushing Painting Paradigms, curated by LaToya Ruby Frazier,

Mason Gross Galleries at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ

Garden Party/Arts Presents: Masculinisms, curated by E.E. Ikeler

221 Franklin Ave. Brooklyn, NY

Sonic Diagrams, curated by Kenya (Robinson),

Recess, Grand Street, NY

Thing: An Outdoor Sculpture Show, curated by  Susan Jennings,

W. Cornwall, CT

Eyes Off The Flag, curated by Mark Thomas Gibson,

Motus Fort and Koki Arts, Tokyo, Japan

The Listening Room Series curated by Kevin Beasely,

New Haven, CT

M.F.A. Thesis Show, Yale University ,

Green Hall Gallery, New Haven, CT

Sunless Sea curated by Florencia Escudero,

Green Hall Gallery, New Haven, CT

 

2011

The Hand Presents: Public Sculpture,

1117 Dekalb, Brooklyn, NY

 

2010

THRILLER, New Work by Avery Singer, Micaela Carolan and Eric Mack,

41 Сoopеr Square Gallery,  The Cooper Union, New York, NY

Brucennial 2010: Miseducation presented by Vito Schnabel and The Bruce Hi Quality Foundation, 350 West Broadway, New York, NY

Mis en Place, curated by David Muenser and Tucker Rae- Grant,

Recess Pop-up Gallery, 467 Amsterdam, New York, NY

QVNOXW// curated by Scott Keightley,

86 Forsyth St, New York, NY

 

2009

Slough, curated by Steve Di Benedetto,

David Nolan Gallery, New York, NY

Mayflowers(Tears in the Fence), curated by Scott Keightley,

401 Broadway, New York, NY

 

2008

Publication-Schmublication, Group Show curated by Tomashi Jackson,

Broadway Gallery, New York., NY.

 

 

Awards:

2011-2012 Barry Cohen Scholarship

2010 Medici Award

2009 Sylvia Applebaum Painting Award

2008 William Randolf Hearst Scholarship

2008 Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship