“Yard/Zone” by Sarah Wagner.

“Yard/Zone,” the latest show at Popps Packing, is an installation by Sarah Wagner – a rendering of her neighborhood, haunting in its simplicity and delicate materials. The installation, which opened on October 4th, is a dimensional scale map of the houses—whole, and in various states of decay and overgrowth—from Wagner’s “Banglatown” neighborhood, rendered dimensionally in cut and folded paper and tape. Within this grid, Godzilla-scale local fauna, fabric pheasants and a fox loom above the neighborhood.

Wagner combines precise, laser-cut frameworks with thin and transparent fabrics in her constructions of artificial nature.

Wagner’s “Yard/Zone” plays the line between map and fantasy, a dichotomy that calls the “truth” of mapping into question. The delicacy of her constructions highlight the ephemeral nature of the structures they mimic, while the larger-than-life megafauna seem to indicate the ultimate triumph of nature over the urban sprawl of humanity.

Pheasants have become a ubiquitous element of the Detroit landscape, an immigrant species running wild through neighborhoods.

The detailed paper homes are for sale individually: $30 for whole, and $20 for partially destroyed or dessicated ones.

Take a walk through Wagner’s neighborhood, and enjoy this lovely, understated work, which manages to cover a lot of ground. It will remain on display at Popps through October 25th.

Popps Packing: 12138 Saint Aubin, Hamtramck; www.poppspacking.org