Eric N. Mack calls himself a painter whose medium is fabric – new work at Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea is mostly hung on stretchers that support not canvas but collaged fabric fragments. Like painting, Mack’s work foregrounds color and pattern, but the artist doesn’t add these elements to the canvas, rather he encounters them as found materials. Instead of creating transparency and texture from paint, these are qualities of the surface itself. Sourced from divergent origins – Mack might use fabric from couture clothing or neighborhood markets – the artist collapses quality distinctions in his dynamic abstractions. (On view through Dec 22nd in Chelsea).
