LOS ANGELES
Megan Geckler: “Set a Course for Wayward Schemes” at Bert Green Fine Art

Megan Geckler’s site-specific installation in the roomy plate glass windows flanking the corner entrance of Bert Green Fine Art downtown consists of thousands of individual segments of brightly colored plastic flagging tape, the kind used by land surveyors and contractors in marking territory, with hues that are the opposite of anything found in nature. Her tilting army of shocking orange, lime, eggplant, canary and Easter-egg pink marches to a staccato beat, with stripes on both the window (bottom left to top right) and the rear wall five feet behind (bottom right to top left) laid in at uniform angles but at variable intervals and in variegated clusters, creating an optical interference pattern. The tape is translucent and the window boxes are lit from within, above and below, but the effects of this arrangement are inverted when viewed at night. In sunlight, the tape seems solid, the stripes more like bars, the back panel more remote. At night, with radiant light pouring out from inside, the colors and materials come alive, the back wall pulls itself into view, and a sliding layer sits as a painting-within-a-painting, activating the optics to dazzling effect.

When she’s not taping things up, Geckler is more likely to draw than to paint, which might explain her facility with ruled lines and crisp edges. But her penchant for rhythm, line, light, and the illusion of depth and movement belongs as much to the realm of abstract painting, and even butts up against photography. Conventions of Op-Art and certain more playful strains of Minimalism are translated by Geckler’s ministrations into three, and even arguably four, dimensions. In one sense her obsessive, complex vision and process represents exertions of control, specificity and intentionality on Geckler’s part; but she invites elements of natural-law chaos into the equation by her casting of X-factors like motion, speed, duration, ambient light and perspective in operative roles in the finished work. This turned out to be a winning strategy, as her enchanting, engaging and completely surprising work enlivens everything it touches, from an empty window to the legacy of Op-Art, to a taxi driver’s evening.