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exhibitions & education current exhibition reviews  Patterns
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Patterns Crucial to Mack's Mix Article originally appeared in "The Atlanta Journal Constitution" on Friday, January 19, 2001. Page Q8. Written by Jerry Cullum Eric Mack's vibrantly bright mixed media paintings represent an overlay of modernist and African-derived patterns on such things as printed circuitry diagrams. Although this strategy of collage has been around for 80 years or so in Europe, these days in the United States, it is associated with DJ music mixing and has taken on a distinct African-American inflection. But unlike more self-aware masters of the visual mix, of whom Atlanta has more than one with the a growing reputation, Mack is pursuing a personal strategy that misses about as often as it hits. Pattern-making really is something built into human beings; it governs everything from the decoration of African walls to the linking of electronic components. So laying down one pattern over another produces interesting results, if it's done with internal consistency. Mack's works, though, scatter their patterns and imagery in ways that range from tightly reasoned to arbitrary. "MSBB-1083" includes playing cards and musical scores, themes that show up in other works. "BBO-3 involves diagrams, pictures of keypads and checkerboard grids like those in Wassili Kandinsky's paintings. Other works combine verbal play: words like "tape deck", "Table I", and "Tuba" alongside sine waves and such like. It's all about connectivity, in every sense. But compare Mack's overall visual rhythms with the syncopated complexities of more established artists, and it's clear that we're with a vision that is in it's early stages. Yet the early stages are well worth looking at. Some pieces, such as "OPH-38" or "BSB-658", are completely resolved compositions by anybody's standards. One of Young Blood Gallery's more self-confident emerging artists, Mack could easily be on his way to something more unambiguously successful. But he needs to clarify his mix of patterns and manipulated images, so that they can become real explorations of the way that chance and necessity interact. Jerry Cullum is an Atlanta writer and senior editor of Art Papers, a magazine of contemporary art. |