BOFFO

BOFFO presents Site-Responsive
Eric N. Mack
634 Fire Island Blvd., Fire Island Pines
Saturday, August 8
Exhibition On View: 12–6 PM
Public Reception: 6–8 PM
RSVP: www.boffo.art

BOFFO is pleased to present Responsive, an exhibition by Eric N. Mack at 634 Fire Island Blvd., Fire Island Pines. Known for his practice that moves fluidly as painting between sculpture and installation with textiles, Mack transforms fabrics into immersive spatial compositions that challenge conventional distinctions between painting, object, architecture, and environment.

For this presentation, 634 Fire Island Blvd. becomes both site and collaborator. Mack’s installation responds to the home’s architecture, light, and domestic history, activating the building and surroundings through gestures of layering, suspension, draping, and accumulation. Textiles, color, and surface function not simply as aesthetic elements but as agents that reshape the viewer’s relationship to space, encouraging movement, perception, and embodied experience.

Rather than treating the house as a neutral backdrop, Site-Responsive considers the building itself as an active participant in the work. The exhibition explores how meaning is produced through context—how materials carry histories, how architecture frames encounters, and how place continually informs artistic production. Mack’s compositions invite visitors to navigate shifting visual and physical relationships, where the boundaries between artwork and site become deliberately porous.

Eric N. Mack (b. 1987, Columbia, MD) is a painter who radically reconsiders the medium’s traditional conventions. By utilizing found materials, Mack creates richly textured compositions that investigate painting in an expanded field and formal concerns of the practice. In 2025, Mack presented a one-person exhibition and site-specific installation at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, as well as a solo exhibition of new works at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York. Mack attended The Cooper Union, NY (BFA) and Yale University, CT (MFA) and is the recipient of prestigious awards and residencies including the Chinati Foundation’s Artists in Residence Program (2023); the Rome Prize (2021-2022); the inaugural BALTIC Artists’ Award (2017); the Rauschenberg Residency on Captiva Island (2017); the Delfina Foundation Residency (2017) and the Studio Museum in Harlem Residency (2014-2015).

BOFFO is thrilled to welcome Man Car Sash (Amanda Ba, Oscar yi Hou, and Sasha Gordon), the third artist residents of our 2026 BOFFO Residency Fire Island season. Amanda, Oscar, and Sasha will be on the island from June 23 - July 13.

Their Artist Talk is this Sunday, June 28th from 5 to 6pm at Whyte Hall, 577 Fire Island Blvd., Fire Island Pines. RSVP for this free event at www.boffo.art

Save the date for Man Car Sash’s Artist Presentation on Fire Island Saturday, July 11h, time and location TBA.

This Saturday, June 20th, we are unveiling a new public artwork on the beach at ozone walk in the Pines. Join us for the reception from 2-6pm. www.boffo.art for more details.

Opening Thursday, February 19 at 6pm, the two-person exhibition Sacred and Profane, organized in partnership with The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (), brings together the powerful practices of Pamela Sneed () and Carlos Martiel () to explore Black presence, erasure, memory, and endurance on Fire Island.

During her 2022 BOFFO Residency on Fire Island, Sneed investigated the little-known history of slave pens on the island, creating large-scale watercolors and collages using natural materials like shells, sand, and seaweed.

In 2024, Martiel’s BOFFO Residency culminated in Jungle, a durational performance in which his exposed body, surrounded by imported tropical fruits, was gradually revealed as attendees consumed the fruit—an indictment of the colonialist and cannibalistic treatment of Black bodies, historically and within contemporary LGBTQ spaces.

Sacred and Profane will feature new work from both Sneed and Martiel, bringing together performance, poetic, and visual art practices. The exhibition will remain on view until April 12, 2026.

🔗 RSVP to February 19’s opening at the link in our bio!
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, Homage 1 (detail), 2022, collage made from found materials on Fire Island, seaweed, cowrie shells, chalk on paper, 72” x 24”, photo by Faris Al-Shathir

, Jungle, 2024, performance documentation, BOFFO Residency, New York, USA, photo by Gili Benita

Join our growing team! Visit the links in our bio for job descriptions and application details before Jan. 31, 2026 or visit NYFA.org/jobs & search BOFFO. Please share!

BOFFO Mission Statement
BOFFO is a nonprofit arts organization that supports artists creating experimental, transformative, and socially engaged work. Through residencies, festivals, and public programs, we connect audiences to art that challenges assumptions and shifts perspectives through collective engagement and radical placemaking.

BOFFO Value Statement
BOFFO imagines a future where our home in the Fire Island Pines serves as both a site of care and a platform—a place where q***r, trans, and BIPOC voices flourish, ideas incubate, and artists catalyze cultural and community transformation. Shaping the arts discourse and leading social change from our foundation in The Pines, BOFFO expands its programming across Fire Island, New York City, and beyond—embracing wild, free, and unrestricted q***r creativity and connection.