Now Exhibitions

Eric N. Mack: A Whole New Thing

Wex Commissioned Project

A colorful installation of fabrics hanging from the ceiling and walls of the Wexner Center lobby.
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Aug 15, 2025–May 24, 2026
Wexner Center for the Arts

Free for all audiences

For ticketing questions please call the Visitor Desk at (614) 292-3535.

If you have questions about accessibility or require an accommodation to participate in this event, please email accessibility@wexarts.org or call (614) 688-3890. Visit our Accessibility page to learn more.

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Experience a new, Wex-commissioned installation by Eric N. Mack, who is known for his large-scale fabric assemblages.

Eric N. Mack’s installation for the lobby commission at the Wexner Center for the Arts deepens his ongoing inquiry into abstraction and reveals a painterly sensibility. Mack foregrounds the expressive and transformative potential of fabric—not only as a material, but as an atmospheric, structural, and social medium. Titled A Whole New Thing, this site-responsive work activating the lobby, staircase, and café areas extends Mack’s long-standing engagement with architecture and public space.

Throughout his career, Mack has created installations for diverse architectural contexts—from the Venetian classicism of Palazzo Grassi and the raw brutalism of Dublin’s Douglas Hyde Gallery to an abandoned gas station at the edge of California’s Salton Sea. In each instance, and now at the iconic Wexner Center, Mack’s interventions demonstrate a sensitive but assertive dialogue with the site. Here, the installation does not simply inhabit space but rearticulates it, proposing new visual and spatial rhythms through a choreography of color and fabric. The textiles do more than hang or drape. They convey tension, gravity, and fragility.

A Whole New Thing is architectural in scale, improvisational in method, and painterly in spirit. It encourages perception of detail, atmosphere, and the social and structural frameworks in which art is made and encountered. As air, light, gravity, and time affect the fabrics, the installation remains alert and alive, in conversation with its site and its viewers.

Visit the galleries through January 11, 2025, to see more of Mack’s work in the exhibition titled All the Oohs, and the Aahs. 

In the press

"Mack calls the works 'fabric collages,' and styles them into sculptures and monumental installations that explore histories of both art and fashion and transform the spaces they take up."
Antwaun Sargent, The New York Times Style Magazine

Learn more

A colorful installation of fabrics hanging from the ceiling and walls of the Wexner Center lobby.

Eric N. Mack, A Whole New Thing, 2025. Bleached silk, raw silk, Missoni knit, silk chiffon, silk organza, silk scarves, vintage apron, bleached cotton, vintage saree, and polyester, dimensions variable. Installation view at the Wexner Center for the Arts, 2025. Commissioned by the Wexner Center for the Arts. Photo: Matthew Pevear.

A colorful installation of fabrics hanging from the ceiling and walls of the Wexner Center lobby.

Eric N. Mack, A Whole New Thing, 2025. Bleached silk, raw silk, Missoni knit, silk chiffon, silk organza, silk scarves, vintage apron, bleached cotton, vintage saree, and polyester, dimensions variable. Installation view at the Wexner Center for the Arts, 2025. Commissioned by the Wexner Center for the Arts. Photo: Matthew Pevear.

A colorful installation of fabrics hanging from the ceiling and walls of the Wexner Center lobby.

Eric N. Mack, A Whole New Thing, 2025. Bleached silk, raw silk, Missoni knit, silk chiffon, silk organza, silk scarves, vintage apron, bleached cotton, vintage saree, and polyester, dimensions variable. Installation view at the Wexner Center for the Arts, 2025. Commissioned by the Wexner Center for the Arts. Photo: Matthew Pevear.

A colorful installation of fabrics hanging from the ceiling of the Wexner Center lobby.

Eric N. Mack, A Whole New Thing, 2025. Bleached silk, raw silk, Missoni knit, silk chiffon, silk organza, silk scarves, vintage apron, bleached cotton, vintage saree, and polyester, dimensions variable. Installation view at the Wexner Center for the Arts, 2025. Commissioned by the Wexner Center for the Arts. Photo: Matthew Pevear.

A colorful fabric installation in the Wexner Center lobby. Some fabric lies on a platform. Others are draped from the ceiling.

Eric N. Mack, A Whole New Thing, 2025. Bleached silk, raw silk, Missoni knit, silk chiffon, silk organza, silk scarves, vintage apron, bleached cotton, vintage saree, and polyester, dimensions variable. Installation view at the Wexner Center for the Arts, 2025. Commissioned by the Wexner Center for the Arts. Photo: Matthew Pevear.

Eric N. Mack, a Black man with short dark hair, a beard, and a mustache. He stands in front of conjoined pieces of fabric.

More about the artist

Eric N. Mack

Eric N. Mack attended The Cooper Union, New York, (BFA) and Yale University, Connecticut, (MFA) and is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards and residencies. His institutional one-person exhibitions include Scampolo!, The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin (2022); Lemme walk across the room, Brooklyn Museum, New York, (2019) and NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, Florida (2021); In austerity, stripped from its support and worn as a sarong, The Power Station, Dallas, Texas (2019); and Vogue Fabrics, Albright–Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York (2017). A one-person exhibition of Mack’s work will open at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, in September 2025. Learn more about the artist.

Tag(s)

Program Support

Eric Mack: A Whole New Thing is organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts and curated by Julieta González.

THIS PRESENTATION IS MADE POSSIBLE BY

ENGIE

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FOR THIS PRESENTATION IS MADE POSSIBLE BY

Larry and Donna James

2025–26 EXHIBITIONS SEASON MADE POSSIBLE BY

Bill and Sheila Lambert

Mike and Paige Crane

FREE GALLERIES MADE POSSIBLE BY

American Electric Power Foundation

Adam Flatto

Axium Packaging

WEXNER CENTER PROGRAMS MADE POSSIBLE BY

Greater Columbus Arts Council

The Wexner Family

Ohio Arts Council, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts

CampusParc

The Columbus Foundation

Every Page Foundation

Mellon Foundation

Axium Packaging

Nationwide Foundation

Michael and Anita Goldberg

Vorys Sater Seymour and Pease LLP

ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY

Joyce Shenk

Rebecca Perry and Ben Towle

Lachelle Thigpen

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Now Exhibitions

Eric N. Mack: A Whole New Thing

Aug 15, 2025–May 24, 2026
Friday's Hours 10AM–6PM
Wexner Center for the Arts

Free for all audiences

For ticketing questions please call the Visitor Desk at (614) 292-3535.

If you have questions about accessibility or require an accommodation to participate in this event, please email accessibility@wexarts.org or call (614) 688-3890. Visit our Accessibility page to learn more.

Become a Member