Eric N. Mack: Lemme walk across the room
NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale will present Eric N. Mack: Lemme walk across the room from March 6 through January 2, 2022. This large-scale installation by New York-based artist Eric N. Mack expands the boundaries of painting, sculpture, and fashion while dynamically reflecting and framing the rich visual experiences of the everyday. Originally presented at the Brooklyn Museum in 2019, the installation is being reimagined for its NSU Art Museum presentation. Mack’s textile-based works will be hung, mounted and draped in conversation with the architecture of the Museum’s grand second floor gallery, transforming this space while acknowledging the history of abstract (expressionist) painting.
Mack considers the essential elements of abstract painting, including color, form, and gesture, but does so through a distinct focus on nontraditional materials such as multi-textured and hand-stained textiles, pegboard, photographs, and images clipped from magazines. He encourages the viewer’s intimate relationship with the work by folding, fastening, draping, or even suspending his paintings so that visitors can move about the space—walking among, or even under, the elements of his installation. In this insistent consideration of how the viewer’s body relates to his paintings in real time, Mack’s work draws from not only sculpture but also fashion with its potential for aesthetic experience within everyday interaction. Fashion and musical performance components further activate the exhibition, presenting painting as a living and multisensory practice.