Lose Yourself in a Rainbow Cube Made of Woven Tape

Megan Geckler created this installation piece to offer visitors a space away from the everyday.

July 6, 2016, 7:50pm

All images ©2016 Megan Geckler. Your escape from patterns your parents designed. 10 x 10 x 10 feet; materials: flagging tape and aluminum. This artwork was made possible in part by a grant from the City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs.

From a distance, this 10-foot-tall installation art piece looks like something out of a technicolor dream. Up close, though, it's very much analog—no technology or digital tools control its colorful surface. Megan Geckler and her team created it by hand weaving flagging tape, carefully placing it to create a dizzying visual effect.

However gloriously glitch it might seem, the artist says it’s meant to be experienced in person, from the inside. “The surface is developed by weaving the tape by hand with a team of assistants based in traditional craft,” Geckler tells The Creators Project. “While the end result of the artwork looks very digital and fabricated, when you see it in person, it becomes immediately obvious that this was crafted and you are aware of the amount of man-hours if must have taken to create.”

Geckler created the piece after being granted the Mid-Career Master Artist Fellowship by the City of Los Angeles (COLA), Department of Cultural Affairs. The piece is currently on display as part of the exhibit C.O.L.A 2016 at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery.

“While I only used four colors, I was strategic about where these colors were placed so that when they overlapped, new tertiary hues would be created,” says Geckler. “The vivid violets are made by overlapping pink and blue. That isn't visible from the exterior, only the interior. The door is kept open when no one is inside, so from the exterior, you get a tease of what the interior is like and the full spectrum range of color helps to invite viewers inside.”

Geckler bring ups visual cues and influences we might recognize from other sources without actually including them. She’s aware of the similarities between the visual composition of the piece to digital noise. From the inside, she says, the piece looks almost like a “pixelated stained glass window.” In drawing out the “translucency of the flagging tape,” Geckler thought about the interactions between color, light, and space, and how they would shape its viewers' experiences.

As for the cryptic title of the piece—Your escape from patterns your parents designed—it’s actually a lyric from Of Montreal’s “Gronlandic Edit.” In the song, Geckler explains, the narrator is “questioning his spirituality” and thinking about the “paths that are intended and laid out for us as children.”

“I conceived of this artwork before knowing the title,” says Geckler. “The song's notions of seclusion, inner reflection, and deciding who you want to be are universal questions. I do feel that the artwork, when you are inside of it, alone and immersed in color, does feel spiritual and very serene.”

As an artist, Geckler thinks about the way that her installation pieces can affect not only an environment but the internal experience of the person approaching her work.

Geckler is currently working on an installation for the Los Angeles International Airport made up of 20,000 feet of hand-dyed, diamond braid, rope. Like the rainbow cube, this piece is about entering a different mindset.

“The installation was designed to provide maximum kinetic movement for the passengers who are in the queue,” says Geckler. “I wanted to take passengers' minds away from the anxieties of flying, and distract them with a full spectrum linear artwork.”