Holland Cotter "Michael Mahalchick." The New York Times February 27, 2004

the New York Times
Michael Mahalchick
By HOLLAND COTTER
Thanks to the Whitney Biennial, mainstream New York critics have finally started to pay attention to so-scalled sound art or soundwork, though artists have been producing it for decades. You can catchrecent examples of the genre at CANADA, which has been holding nightly performance events as part of the first New York solo show of Michael Mahalchick, himself a performer and sculptor.
Mr. Mahalchick's sculptures of scavenged materials are the fixed element here. Wall sculptures are made from pieces of tape, plastic or cloth stretched tautly over open-work supports that look like fragments of lawn furniture. Some of the free-standing pieces are stacked bundles of bright colored fabrics or other materials, tightly bound with ribbons and straps, suggesting a backpacker's version of bondage. A couple of wall hangings sewn with baubles and beads have an abject decorative flair.
The spirit of the sculptures, improvisatory and fanciful but also intensely concentrated, is reflected in certain of the gallery's February performances, which are on view as projected videos. Outstanding among them is a hypnotic synthesizer-based piece by David Galbraith and Teresa Seemann and a video-and-dance extravaganza conceived by the uncategorizably odd - meaning good - artist Marcos Rosales, working with Jeremy Wade. The artist collective PFFR, smart and inventive, did a show last weekend; and Mr. Mahalchick himself will perform on March 6 in a program titled "When There Is No Room in Hell, the Dead Will Walk the Earth." There is reason to expect a night to remember.
Published: February 27, 2004