Press Release
Josh Lilley is
thrilled to launch the 2014 program with the first show at the gallery for
Brooklyn-based artist Anissa Mack.
The works
in Body Copy are a collection; a collection of objects that reference
the abstract, the vernacular and the found – and focus at all times on the
continuous reinvention of memory. Investigating nostalgia and perceived
experience in her practice, Mack presents a show created from reflected and
altered images – heralding objects that allow for misremembering and
distortion. This specific group focuses on ideas of repetition and
fragmentation, in order to create a narrative and dialogue about the
representational role of objects within our daily lives.
With affinity to
both craft and outsider art traditions as well as the austere forms of
Minimalism, Mack has often been drawn to motifs from the American vernacular
such as quilts, masks, or needlepoint cross-stitch patterns – elements that in
themselves exist as multiples in the world. Her quilt works are based on
traditional American craft patterns in which the perspective has been
distorted, causing the forms to push and pull from the wall creating optical
illusions. Her sculptural casts of quilts in aquaresin, standing rigid and
upright leaning against – and at other times hanging from the wall, display a
material shift that is crucial to her, as the casting becomes a direct physical
impression where the object is “full of itself” – taking on the unstable
identity of a surrogate form.
Work in the
exhibition physically creates or surrounds other works. Shape, texture and
imagery echo through the gallery stressing that it is the space and distance
between the pieces where a viewer can find meaning. Mack builds a collection
that points towards nostalgic reflections – at times twisting the veracity of
the object in question. This can be seen in both Body Copy pieces –
where newer works (casts) surround and envelope older works in order to make
something hybrid and new. The cast pieces are themselves copies of other things,
while the arrowhead pieces that they surround are importantly not real
arrowheads. Instead they are just sharp rocks, or flint flakes arranged as one
might display a collection of arrowheads. Her intrigue is that in this format
they become a fantastical collection, suggesting a need to place narrative and
desire in objects through possession.
In her Pewter
works – & Teeth, she makes casts from rubber moulds that were
initially taken from aquaresin casts. For Mack these multiple generations of
artworks are thought of as memories – the more we remember something the more
likely it is to be colored by current context, and less empirically true.
Memory becomes a creative and almost sculptural act for her – with the works in
the exhibition an attempt to capture this process. This repetition and
re-working allow Mack to push the original thing into the distance… allowing
for secondary and tertiary commentaries on what she has come to regard as
relics – objects now somehow sacred due to imposed and implied narratives, despite
being often banal or normal when viewed alone.
Fantasy and the
encouragement to engage give us all a capacity to invest power and meaning in
the objects around us. When discussing her legs sculpture in the show, Mack
mentioned the influence of reliquaries and devotional objects – that just a
fragment of a clearly painted plaster leg in a church can come to represent
something much more profound, despite the accepted acknowledgment that it is
not part of a realleg at all. Mack displays the lapses and faults in
memory, and our bastardisation of it. Yet she rejoices in those human errors
too. Her eggs are an appropriate comment on this, where the viewer is
encouraged to hold one of them as they view the show; allowing them the chance
to possess the piece and to be directly engaged with the repetition and
tactility of all the works in front of them.
Anissa
Mack – Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Mack completed
her MFA at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia in 1996.
Previous solo exhibitions include Second, Laurel Gitlen, New York, 2011,
andAnissa Mack: On Loan, Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara,
2008. Selected group exhibitions include DNA: Strands of Abstraction,
Loretta Howard Gallery, New York, 2013, Hang Up, Josh Lilley Gallery,
London, 2012, Painting Expanded, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, 2011
and BigMinis, CAPC Musée D’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux, France, 2011.
