Straddle the Line, in Discord and Rhyme

March 17, 1:09 PMAustin Art ExaminerGabrielle Faust

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Women & Their Work will be bringing California-based installation artist Megan Geckler to Austin for her first exhibition in Texas. 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 plastic 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, California. Her work has been shown extensively on the West Coast as well as the Museum of Modern Fine Art in Belarus, Russia. In 2007 she was recipient of the Durfee Artists’ Resource Completion Grant in conjunction with her show Set A Course for Wayward Schemes for Bert Green Fine Art in Los Angeles.
 
Women & Their Work is able to bring Geckler to Austin through the Visual Artists Network subsidy program.  As part of the VAN program, Geckler will include young art students in her installation process. Students from Eastside Memorial and Travis High Schools will work one-on-one with Geckler during installation week to help realize her vision for the gallery.

Geckler's exhibition will run from April 16th through May 30 of 2009 at Women & Their Work (1710 Lavaca, Austin, TX. 78701). The opening reception will be from 6 till 8pm on April 16th.

See examples of Megan Geckler’s at http://www.megangeckler.com/sitespecificinstall.htm