Marsha Cottrell

PRESS RELEASE

 

Anthony Meier is pleased to present a solo showcase of new work by Marsha Cottrell on view from 12 September to 24 October 2025. This exhibition—Cottrell’s second with the gallery—marks a significant moment in a decades-long practice that has redefined the expressive potential of digital image-making. Featuring expansive and intimately-scaled pieces in color, a pair of letter-size works in laser toner, and a monumental black and white collage assembled from smaller sheets of paper, the exhibition traces the continued evolution of Cottrell’s singular visual language.

Since the mid-1990s, Cottrell has embraced the anonymity of computers and laser printers as both collaborators and constraints, forging an approach that is at once deliberate and intuitive. Compositions are built incrementally: handmade paper is passed through a printer in successive iterations, accruing layers of line, structure, and tonal variation in rich black carbon-based toner until the surface attains a measured weight and visual complexity. Though made by mechanical means, the resulting works retain the sensibility of drawing and painting—simultaneously networked and handmade, ephemeral and exacting, each the product of sustained inquiry, repeated gesture, and the accumulation of time.

For this exhibition, Cottrell expands the range of her practice with a new suite of work on paper, rendered in archival pigment-based ink. Through an additive process, ink gathers onto planes of tactile depth bordered by silk-like Mitsumata paper containing visible remnants of organic matter. Within one intimately-scaled piece, Untitled (Dark with vertical lines), a dense network of fine lines gleams at the edge of perception. In another, Untitled (Light blue-gray with dots), a constellation of alternating marks gently pulsates across a still blue-grey field. Meanwhile, Untitled (Horizontal blue with yellow-orange border) presents a rectangular expanse of vivid cerulean that is both object and aperture, animated by subtle shifts in spatial resonance. Though each image varies in palette and material nuance, all serve as a record of attention—a measured exchange between presence and absence, artist and machine.

A monumental black-and-white collage extends this inquiry into another register, where spatial logic and optical rhythm come into sharper focus. In Untitled (Float), composed of multiple sheets of paper, the atmospheric density of Cottrell’s grayscale compositions converges with the formal clarity of her color work. Repeating circular motifs—constructed not through hue, but tonal restraint—are anchored in place by a grid of 128 sheets of Akatosashi paper, hand-assembled into quilt-like formation. More than a static image, Untitled (Float) is a site of encounter, a plane where the elemental forces of space, time, perception, and materiality are not merely represented but felt. 

Throughout Cottrell’s practice, process remains visible. Smudges, spatters, creases, and other errant marks are preserved rather than corrected. These traces are not signs of imperfection but evidence of a method that embraces chance and contradiction. Eschewing finality to reveal a process of discovery, the works remain fluid, centering both the visibility of their making and the open-ended interpretation they invite.