The Santa Barbara Independent "Not Your Realtor's Caravan"

by Charles Donelan

May 10, 2007

The objects created by Anissa Mack currently on dislay at the Contemporary Arts Forum are all about near misses and moments after—things that didn't quite happen, and things that just happened. They are treated with a wry New England sensibility that's filtered through Mack's casual intellectual command of the vocabulary and tradition of contemporary art-making. In one piece, a series of off-to-the-side phootgraphic portraits document the moment after a group of high school seniors had their yearbook photos taken. In another, the artist relives the debunking of a family myth by stitching the words "MY GREAT GREAT GREAT GREAT GREAT GRANDFATHER KNEW DANIEL BOONE" onto quilts bought on eBay. These crisp witticisms and their attendant ironies of displacement and self-recognition achieve one effect in the gallery, and an entirely different resonance on the context of the private homes in which a nearly identical counter-exhibition is held.

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