Eric N. Mack: Notes on Sarong | Chronorama Redux

This text, published in the accompanying catalogue to the Chronoroma Redux exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi, thinks through, with, and around a new monumental work by Eric N. Mack. Taking after the collagic structure of Mack’s work, titled Sarong, 2023, the playful text weaves together disparate geographical and historical scenes to expand some prior reflections on Mack’s dissident reworkings of abstract modernist traditions. The reader is guided through a suite of references and interventions including: meditations on the surface sublime vis-á-vis Richard Bruce Nugent’s decadent modernist prose; the “aesthetic sociality of Blackness” in Hélio Oiticica’s Parangolés; a photograph taken by Kassian Cephas of Javenese men in colonial Indonesia self-adorned with sarongs; and finally, Mary J. Blige’s intimate, sensuous sonics.

Cover image: Eric N. Mack, Sarong, 2023, Courtesy of the artist, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York and Galleria Franco Noero, Torino. Installation view, Chronorama Redux at Palazzo Grassi, 2023. Ph. Marco Cappelletti © Palazzo Grassi