On May 3, PORTA in Los Angeles hosted an exhibition by Glen Dandridge Jr. — a photographer, model, and actor whose biography itself resembles the script of a visual essay. Born in Virginia, a University of Missouri alumnus and a professional basketball player with eleven years of international experience, Dandridge played in six countries, including Argentina, Belgium, Morocco, and New Zealand. It was while living abroad that he began photographing the cities, people, and cultural rhythms around him — first as a way of observing, and later as a distinct professional language.
Interestingly, creative producer and businessman Dmytro Tkachenko had a somewhat similar experience — and it was he who transformed this photography presentation into a complete spatial experience. The approach he applied to the exhibition design originally began as an observation. Later, it developed into a methodology for immersive entertainment. For some time, it was indeed used only in that field. Eventually, however, Dmytro scaled it and made it valuable for everyone working with interactive formats.
Glen Dandridge Jr.’s photography relies not only on composition, but also on a sense of presence: it contains precision of movement, attention to the body, the gaze, and the pause. In this sense, Dandridge’s work strongly resonates with Dmytro Tkachenko’s professional perspective.
As part of the exhibition of Glen Dandridge Jr.’s works, Dmytro helped shape the interaction between guests, photography, light, and spatial composition in such a way that visitors did not simply look at the works, but moved through the exhibition as if through a carefully designed emotional route.
Tkachenko’s approach grew out of his practice of creating immersive environments. In 2015, at 7270 Melrose Avenue, he opened his flagship escape room location, launched under the 60out brand — one of the largest and most technologically advanced in the United States.
Later, in 2018, Dmytro took part in developing the concept and producing the official Sony Pictures room “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” helping the 60out brand establish cooperation with Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures, and Disney.
It was this experience that shaped Dmytro’s understanding of space not merely as a decoration for interaction, but as an environment that influences a person’s emotional state, thinking, and experience — an understanding that became the foundation of his original methodology.
In Dmytro Tkachenko’s professional methodology, space is not a background or a decoration. It is an environment that affects a person’s emotional state, thinking, and way of interacting with an event. For Dmytro, what matters is not only what a guest sees, but also the sequence in which they see it, where they stop, how their attention shifts, and what remains in memory after they leave.
In designing the photography exhibition, Dmytro Tkachenko used what he calls a three-level emotional flow. First, he creates an initial emotional hook: a moment that gently captures attention and draws a person into the atmosphere. Then comes controlled movement through the space, where lighting, object placement, music, visual accents, and even the guest’s trajectory work together. Finally, there is an anchor of emotional memory: a detail or feeling that prevents the experience from dissolving immediately after the event ends.
At Glen Dandridge Jr.’s exhibition, this logic worked especially organically. Photography requires silence, but not emptiness. It needs a space where the viewer can come closer, step back, see a frame from a different distance, and feel the rhythm between images. Tkachenko used principles originally developed for immersive entertainment formats, but adapted them to a more delicate context — an artistic event.
Here, the goal was not to surprise for the sake of effect. The goal was to guide attention so that each work could have its own moment. And Dmytro handled this task exceptionally well.
Together with his wife, Dmytro Tkachenko runs FLORAL N5, a premium floral design and event decor studio, as well as the restaurant MOOD.
FLORAL N5 serves private clients and corporate orders throughout Los Angeles, operates through the Shopify platform, and creates every composition by hand. MOOD is known for its breakfasts and brunches, but even more so for the atmosphere that exists both inside the venue and beyond it — in the customer’s memory after visiting the restaurant.
At first glance, what could possibly connect a restaurant space, event decor, and immersive entertainment? Dmytro Tkachenko sees the common thread precisely in working with emotion through details.
This is where the value of experiential design lies: it does not impose emotion, but creates the conditions in which emotion can arise naturally, on its own. Lighting, music, table arrangement, pauses between visual accents, and the movement of guests all influence engagement and retention not separately, but as a unified scenario.
That is why Dmytro Tkachenko’s method extends beyond escape rooms or immersive games. It can work in a restaurant, a gallery, an exhibition, or event design — anywhere space is meant not merely to exist, but to interact with a person.
The exhibition at PORTA became a clear confirmation of this idea. Glen Dandridge Jr.’s photographs spoke in the language of images, while the space designed by Dmytro Tkachenko helped that language sound more precise. As a result, the event became not just another presentation of works, but an intimate experience of encounter — with the artist, with the city, and with one’s own way of looking and seeing.
For Los Angeles, where creative culture is constantly searching for new forms of interaction with audiences, this approach feels especially relevant and valuable.
And for the international community, it is yet another proof that the principles of immersive design can be far broader than the entertainment industry in which they first began.