A Species Between Worlds

MESH collaborated with artist John Mack for over a year to develop this 15,000sf exhibition, which explores the relationship between human consciousness, nature, and our media devices. Mack shot photographs in more than 50 US national parks plus the seven wonders of the natural world. He also captured these landscapes in the Pokemon Go app. The six sections of the exhibition contrast these images in various ways to invite us to contemplate our attention to our natural environment vs. the gamified alternatives.

The show is large and ambitious, but we wanted the architectural scheme to be minimal, so it could be installed and taken down quickly, and so we would not end up filling landfill with studs and wallboard, as at the end of most art fairs. We devised a bolted steel strut system to construct spaces and hang works and hung screen material with magnets. Once we changed from traditional photographs to light boxes, we realized we didn’t need wall panels at all and suspended these works in a simple frame.