MEGAN GECKLER

Megan Geckler has been realizing her webbed multicolor installations around the country and even world of late, but less frequently has she shown small individual pieces. What these frontal objects lack in physical embrace they make up for in visual pizzazz. Geckler’s compositions, fabricated like the installations from flagging tape stretched over tubular steel supports, resemble lawn chairs somehow mutated into Bauhaus tapestries. The tape, gloriously hued in its plastic sheen, describes networks of regularly or not-so-regularly alternating color – or, as frequently, black on white, or even black on black. (As evidenced by this body of work, at least, Geckler experiments incessantly with sometimes surprisingly nuanced color, and non-color, combinations.) Varying the width of her tape, the density of her weave, and/or her palette, Geckler realizes a surprisingly broad formal vocabulary. She also realizes a surprisingly painterly art out of paint-free materials. (Andi Campognone, 300 West 2nd St., Pomona CA; closed. www.andicampognoneprojects.com)

- Peter Frank

(image above: MEGAN GECKLER, Black and White, 2011, Flagging tape and stainless steel, 28 x 55 inches)

With the creation of eight new works in “A Fraction of the Sum,” Megan Geckler foregoes the engagement of architectural space so characteristic of her large-scale installations in favor of a more intimate conversation. Consistent with the hybridized nature of her encompassing installations, which incorporate both painterly and sculptural concerns, the works in “A Fraction” –all constructed from flagging tape interwoven along two axes between wall-mounted stainless steel supports–indicate her interest in the literalness associated with the vocabulary of Minimalism and the phenomenological concerns of Light and Space art. Yet, she also resoundingly signals her enthrallment with abstract painting.

The works in “A Fraction,” aside from a few minor changes in depth, essentially operate on two dimensions; as a result, it is a conversation more intensely focused on painterly concerns. Geckler playfully, almost flirtatiously, tweaks optical receptors, in a serious engagement of visual sensuality. The interwoven squares within the repeated cruciform structure of Red, Yellow, Blue exhibit a quality of visual flickering reminiscent of hard-edge abstract painter Karl Benjamin, specifically, his “checkerboard” canvases and “V/C” paintings. But Geckler is also enamored with progressions of numbers, logic, and possibilities, which she rifles through, forward and backward, as demonstrated in Warm/Cool andCool/Warm, works which exhibit an affinity with Josef Albers and his use of mathematical relationships to structural composition. Visually, Warm/Cool and Cool/Warm also reference Frank Stella’s Double Scramble (1968), one of myriad paintings of concentric squares which Stella generated in multiple color progressions and gray scales, evoking the illusion of a double ziggurat either receding into the picture plane, on the one side, or protruding from it, on the other.

While Geckler alludes to the paradox of painting as a medium of flatness that speaks to the illusion of depth, she also embraces the zeitgeist of the digital age as the milieu in which culture increasingly exists; the manner in which she interweaves flagging tape results in a mimesis of digitized pixilation. Only the on/off signal in the abstracted digital world becomes, for Geckler, discrete squares of color, winking and flashing, on the surface of her construction. Instead of a simulacrum of the literal world, Geckler creates a concrete experience that engages physically, offering perceptual stimuli that vibrate and dance before our eyes.

-Christopher Michno

“The Art of Math” by Shana Nys Dambrot

Ask artist Megan Geckler how she started making the architectural installation art she’s known for, and you’ll get a story about a young woman who was good at math and had lofty dreams of becoming a neurosurgeon. Initially, Geckler studied organic chemistry, advanced calculus, the neuro-matrix, and the optic nerve, but, thinking art school would be a lark (not unlike summer camp), she applied, attended, and never looked back. The truth is, as her work evolves – becoming more complex with every commission and typically involving crews, charts, and calculations – those math classes are coming in handy. Think streamer hanging a la party decoration, except in swirls, stripes, vectors, and vortexes, with each installation engineered using hundreds of geometrical functions, creating large-scale objects and environments constructed entirely of colorful industrial tape.

I first encountered the interference-pattern magic of one of Megan’s pieces when she installed “Set a Course for Wayward Schemes” in the windows of Bert Green Fine Art in 2008. Green recalls how the piece “defined the street corner in a profound way, causing an optical illusion for passengers and moving vehicles, while at the same time anchoring the corner space as a light-filled beacon.” Other projects at institutions from the Wexner Center and the Pasadena Museum of California Art to commercial and corporate venues like Space 1520, Urban Outfitters, and most recently, the CAA offices and the Nike Vault at LA Live, have all capitalized on her unique ability to draw inspiration from every location on its own terms. Andi Campognone, whose gallery will exhibit Megan’s work in November notes that “Geckler’s architectural installations not only incorporate what I love about non-objective painting, but expand that experience of shape, line and color to an interactive volume, breaking the rule of wall.”

Her contribution to Avant LA’s “Top Ten Now” show in October harkened back to her BGFA installation; it occupied the windows, acting as a visual lure. “Megan’s work is incredibly eye-catching, mostly thanks to her sense of color, which I find to be acutely modern, if not downright futuristic. What I love about her work is that it functions equally well in two dimensions as it does in three dimensions, creating a spatial dialogue that is unique to her installations.” – Shirlae Cheng-Lifshin, PMCA Associate Curator and Exhibition Manager. But despite an overwhelming amount of attention and love coming her way, securing gallery representation has been something of a challenge. “I get why people don’t or can’t buy my art. The commitment level of an installation in a private house is huge. The work is space-specific; it’s hard to take home with you. I’ve never sold anything. I’m not in anyone’s private collection. I’d have to change to fit in, to exist in the stream of commercial objects. But I get to make art with other people’s money.” You do the math. For more on Megan, check out LACANVAS.COM or megangeckler.com

Megan Geckler, “Spread the ashes of the colors”; Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University (Catalog) with interview with Laura Lisbon.

Geckler creates large-scale, site-specific installations assembled by stretching thousands of strands of colored flagging tape into the artist’s signature form of optical architecture. In Geckler’s hands, flagging tape – an industrial material normally utilized by surveyors to demarcate space on construction sites – transforms into dazzling, kinetic structures that mimic the cool, slick look of advertisements, haute fashion backdrops, and high-design products. Her sculptural, translucent designs simulate and reference our idea of the mass-produced space age while camouflaging the intricately handmade quality of the work. Completely site specific and never duplicated, Geckler’s “drawings in space” flirt with both Op Art and minimalism while retaining a sense of play and delight.

Megan Geckler earned her MFA in Sculpture from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, CA. Her work has been extensively shown on the West Coast as well as at the Museum of Modern Fine Art in Belarus, Russia. In 2007 she was the recipient of the Durfee Artists’ Resource Completion Grant in conjunction with her show “Set a Course for Wayward Schemes” at Bert Green Fine Art in Los Angeles. In 2010, she exhibited large installation work at the Pasadena Museum of California Art and at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH.

Full PDF catalog available here. (Geckler is featured on pages 14-17)

Residency at Women & Their Work: April 14-17, 2009
www.womenandtheirwork.org

David DiMichele’s cover story, “ABEX RETURNS: THE SEQUEL IN LA It’s Not Just About the Paint Anymore” features the work of artists who are working in a manner similar to Abstract Expressionists, but using alternative formats such as sculpture, photography and installation in a manner likened to Donald Judd’s “neither painting nor sculpture” objects.

Featuring the work of Rebecca Bollinger, Megan Geckler, Anthony Pearson, and Christina Pierson.

Urban Outfitter’s Blog interviews Megan about her new installation “Seeing thoughts in repeat” in Hollywood at Space 15 Twenty (1520 N. Cahuenga Blvd) asks about decoration vs. installation, color choices and compliments.

“Playtime”, group show at see line gallery, opening on March 22, 2011
curated by Janet Levy and Leonardo Bravo

On February 22, at Urban Outfitters in Hollywood (Space 1520), a unique installation will debut. More info to follow soon, including links to the UO Blog and PR. Stay tuned!