Eric N. Mack, a 39-year-old artist known for his distinctive approach to abstraction, has developed a unique painting style that forgoes traditional paint in favor of fabric. Working from a modest studio located in a repurposed office building in Manhattan’s financial district, Mack creates vibrant assemblages from a variety of textiles. His workspace is filled with colorful fabric remnants, lengths of gauzy material, and racks of clothing, including pieces he has designed. Central to his process is a heavy-duty Singer sewing machine, which he uses to stitch together layers of fabric into complex, irregular forms.
Trained as a painter at Cooper Union and Yale University, Mack has long challenged conventional definitions of painting. Early in his career, he experimented with applying paint onto unconventional surfaces such as blankets and drop cloths, presenting them as sculptural objects. For nearly a decade, he has shifted away from paint and brush, relying exclusively on fabric and thread to construct his works. His pieces often extend over metal frames, hang from lines or freestanding armatures, or cascade in bursts of color across architectural spaces, effectively transforming environments into immersive sculptures of light and texture.
At the time of a recent studio visit in early June, Mack was preparing for an exhibition at Paula Cooper Gallery in Chelsea, which opened later that month. The works displayed included collages formed from a variety of stitched and layered materials, combining disparate shapes and patterns into dynamic, tactile compositions.
Mack emerged as part of a wave of young Black artists in the early 2010s who introduced innovative, cross-disciplinary approaches to contemporary art. He gained early institutional recognition with his participation in a landmark group exhibition of emerging artists at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2012. His trajectory continued with inclusion in the 2019 Whitney Biennial and his first solo exhibition in New York City at the Brooklyn Museum the same year. Since then, he has exhibited widely, garnering critical attention and expanding his presence in the art world.
His fabric-based works connect to a broader lineage of conceptual artists who have explored painting while subverting or abandoning traditional media. Influences cited by Mack include Sam Gilliam, known for draping painted canvases unstretched in the late 1960s; Robert Rauschenberg, who incorporated textiles into his assemblages during the 1970s; and the environmental works of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, recognized for wrapping buildings and monuments.
Looking ahead, Mack is set to participate this fall in “Hard Art,” an intergenerational exhibition showcasing 44 artists, further cementing his role within contemporary dialogues on abstraction and materiality.