Critic's Choice Fred Camper The Chicago Reader January 24, 2004

"Mark Arctander's 20 new works at Roy Boyd use humorously displaced found objects to reveal paradoxes of our consumer culture. The zipper pieces have a startling sexiness, something I haven't seen in his work before. In Maple Zipper No. 10 (Triple) four wood laminate panels are connected by three zippers, suggesting two pairs of shorts that have been zipped together like sleeping bags. But the zippers are partially undone, and the laminate, which is normally used to cover, becomes part of an effort to uncover, undress, and expose. In Bookshelves (Classics), works of Byron, Dostoyevsky, and Arthur Conan Doyle are set horizontally on shelves just wide enough to contain them. There's no easy way to remove any of the volumes, and the reds of the shelves and covers match - all pointing to the way in which books are used for interior decoration. In Coldpiece a sled sits on a grid of plate glass, a kitschy painting of a winter landscape resting on its runners - a reminder of how powerless sugary nature pictures are compared to the real thing."