Over the last few years, Eric N. Mack (b. 1987, Columbia, MD) has been experimenting with custom steel armatures that temporarily anchor his paintings to existing architecture while anticipating future mobility. He describes the works as site-responsive, rather than site-specific, with the flexibility to perform differently as they move from one context to another. In this installation at Arts and Letters, Mack transforms the skylit North Gallery into a dynamic environment of suspended textile paintings that rely on these armatures. The first work, hung like a curtain across the threshold, acts like a filter or a lens, shaping our sense of the room as we enter. Others lean against a wall, cantilever over a passageway, or grip a corner of the room. Seeing the exhibition requires moving through and around these objects.

The titles of Mack’s exhibitions, like the fabric remnants he uses, are selected from what he finds in the world around him. This one, Fishers of Men, is taken from a now-shuttered seafood restaurant in Harlem, though it may bring other associations to mind. Central to Mack’s work is nuance, and in this exhibition, Arts and Letters aims to be a holding place for that nuance.