Marsha Mack’s Salty/Sweet is a solo sculpture exhibition and the artist’s latest public attempt to attain happiness via imported Asian candies and foodstuffs. Divided into two evening events occurring on Saturday, Oct 14th, from 5-8pm, and Saturday, November 11th, from 5-8pm, the public is invited to join Mack in a free tasting of old favorites and new discoveries from local Asian grocery stores.
Practiced as a form of self care, the acts of grocery shopping and the consumption of mass produced, imported Asian candies form the bedrock of Marsha Mack’s mixed-race experience. Using a growing catalog of personal symbols culled from the packages of favorite childhood candies, a colossal stained porcelain charm bracelet dangles from floor to ceiling through the center of the gallery. Between heavy links adorned with strawberry, eye, and moth charms, sheer banners featuring stock and ai-generated spa aesthetic imagery create an air of lightness between suspended sculptures.
Preference, a subconscious process uniquely cultivated in each individual, is twice disembodied as fabricated textiles designed using machine-learning provide a literal backdrop to the definitively tactile porcelain sculptures. The agency of the physical body, its needs and wants, is measured link by link, charm to charm - bound by gravity and weighted by memory. Complicating the relationship between formation of identity, self-soothing, and global trade routes, Salty/Sweet underscores food-centric experiences as the source of both pleasure and introspection.
