Megan Cotts
Based upon a series of patent drawings for honeycomb paper that originated in her family in late 19th century Germany, Megan Cotts' work highlights how family history is inextricably tied to politics, labor, technology, and geography. Made of canvas, wood, aluminum, steel, rope, foam, and epoxy, Cotts' sculptures reinterpret the honeycomb paper used for decorative objects until 1938, when the Nazi party took over the facotry to build identical structures in different materials for the airplane industry. The artist’s silkscreens present a direct representation of the patent drawings—a kind of building block language for the work as a whole—and the sculptures offer her reinterpretation of those forms in larger scale. The pieces speak to the direct process of translation at work in the original honeycomb product, working through machinery to move from two dimensions to three dimensions. Cotts often combines the handmade and the fabricated, in a way that focuses on the space where the two meet, and where they diverge. The physical reinterpretation of objects, with both familial and historic potency, maintains a grounding based upon the nearly-universal experience of family history imparted through personal objects.
Cotts has exhibited her solo work at Dan Graham and Compact Space in …
Based upon a series of patent drawings for honeycomb paper that originated in her family in late 19th century Germany, Megan Cotts' work highlights how family history is inextricably tied to politics, labor, technology, and geography. Made of canvas, wood, aluminum, steel, rope, foam, and epoxy, Cotts' sculptures reinterpret the honeycomb paper used for decorative objects until 1938, when the Nazi party took over the facotry to build identical structures in different materials for the airplane industry. The artist’s silkscreens present a direct representation of the patent drawings—a kind of building block language for the work as a whole—and the sculptures offer her reinterpretation of those forms in larger scale. The pieces speak to the direct process of translation at work in the original honeycomb product, working through machinery to move from two dimensions to three dimensions. Cotts often combines the handmade and the fabricated, in a way that focuses on the space where the two meet, and where they diverge. The physical reinterpretation of objects, with both familial and historic potency, maintains a grounding based upon the nearly-universal experience of family history imparted through personal objects.
Cotts has exhibited her solo work at Dan Graham and Compact Space in Los Angeles, Junior Projects and AIR Gallery in New York, TSA in Brooklyn, I-A-M Gallery and Atelierhof Kreuzberg in Berlin, Germany, and SIA Gallery in Sheffield, England. She has also performed and exhibited with D3 at Machine Project and Human Resources in Los Angeles, CCS Gallery at UC Santa Barbara, and Central Trak Gallery in Dallas.
Courtesy of Klowden Mann
