Eric N. Mack at The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art

Recognized for formally agglutinative, strikingly hued, large-scale three-dimensional works composed of stained or dyed material and generally augmented by small objects and located pictures, Eric N. Mack prefers his artwork to be construed inside the expanded discipline of portray. Whereas this means an intriguing set of antecedents, from Robert Rauschenberg’s “Jammers” to the draped canvases of Sam Gilliam, viewers of this explicit exhibition are required to barter it as they’d an immersive set up. Titled “Scampolo!,” the Italian phrase for “remnant,” the present was born of an invite to provide new work in response to the gallery’s late-’70s Brutalist structure, in addition to its surrounding context. A lot of the material used was regionally sourced from Emblem Weavers, one of many final remaining linen makers in a rustic that was as soon as, within the late eighteenth century, the world’s greatest linen producer.

Guests to the Douglas Hyde are sometimes supplied a panoramic view of any given exhibition from a mezzanine entrance the place they might linger some time earlier than descending, at their chosen tempo, into the sizable gallery by way of open staircase. Mack’s work relies on the motion of our bodies by house, on minute shifts in vantage. So it’s unsurprising that he ought to select this staircase as a nexus from which to elaborate a habitat that appears without delay precarious and resplendent, makeshift and thoroughly thought by. To tether, to drape, to heap, to stretch, to connect, to droop. The number of formal maneuvers deployed are matched by an equally notable vary of real-world reference factors: ship’s rigging, short-term shelter, festive bunting, wayside shrine, temper board, vogue unfold. (The artist’s credentials within the latter regard embrace earlier collaborations with designers Grace Wales Bonner and Kiko Kostadinov.) To navigate the present’s delicately delineated however porous quadrants requires a continuing—and repeatedly rewarded—recalibration of 1’s most speedy bodily environment and proximate visible stimuli.

— Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith