Megan Plunkett
Liste Year
Year of Birth
Country of Birth
Presented by
2023
1985
United States
Sweetwater
Megan Plunkett’s images blend a variety of practical effects and photographic techniques with an eerie view toward common objects: scale is distorted, clarity is confounded, expectations are upended. Plunkett considers photography to be a distinct kind of embodiment, and questions how visual suggestions affect overall perception and physical interaction with images.
For the 2023 edition of Liste Showtime, Sweetwater presents a series of small photographs by Megan Plunkett featuring Coca-Cola-branded glasses and tin cans. Plunkett’s interest in these bizarre, inanimate objects stems from their familiarity – and the qualities that make them not-quite-just-right.
Works from the “Big Shot” and “Cruel and Thin” series feature the instantly-recognizable Coca-Cola logo on a strangely smooth cup of Coke, which, upon closer inspection, reveals itself to be a candle. The logo functions as a signifier in the public consciousness, assigning an identity to the cup, one which ultimately is false.
The “Dirty, Dirty” works meanwhile appear to be depict strange portals: tin cans, sliced open, featuring USB drives as crooked teeth. The images depict an uneasy liminal space, seen from both inside and outside, a threshold both crossed and not-quite-crossed.
Installation view, "Watch Me Fall", Shivers Only at DOC Paris, 2023
Megan Plunkett (*1985, Los Angeles) lives and works in Los Angeles. Recent solo exhibitions include “Leave It”, Sweetwater, Berlin (2022); “Electric Avenue” at Emalin, London (2021); and “Return to Sender” at F Gallery, Houston (2020). She has also been featured in group exhibitions at Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn; Park View/Paul Soto, Los Angeles; Magenta Plains, New York; Reena Spaulings, Los Angeles; and And Now, Dallas, among others. Plunkett received an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, in 2017 and a BFA from the Pratt Institute, New York, i ...
