Bio
Kyle Cottier (b. Louisville, KY 1993) is a sculptor. They hold a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati, 2015 and attended the New York Studio Residency Program in Brooklyn, 2014. They spent a year living in the Smoky Mountains from 2021-2022 as an Artist-In-Residence at Arrowmont School of Arts & Craft . Kyle's interdisciplinary practice blends traditional textile and woodworking techniques spanning sculpture, drawing, and performance. They create work informed by the convergence of the natural and made world, exploring the synthesis of personal and social transformations. Currently, Kyle is living and working as an artist in Knoxville, TN, (traditional territory of the Tsalagi peoples,) and is a 2025 MFA candidate at the University of Tennessee Knoxville’s Graduate Sculpture program.
Statement
My ecologically-minded studio practice involves aspects of sculpture, installation, and performance. I work with both raw and discarded materials to illuminate the intersections of the natural and artificial worlds. I build objects by utilizing a variety of traditional craft practices across wood, clay, fiber, and metal. I combine these processes with materials that I find in the simple wreckage of my surroundings. I forage organic detritus, collect moments of urban decay, and incorporate accumulated food waste to use in my sculptures.
My sculptural forms, that initially appear to be rigid and geometric, become fluid and organic through physical activation. I process my materials by fragmenting them into modular units and weaving them together, addressing the fundamental idea of connection at play. At the same time, there’s an impression the work can always be reformulated along a continuum of alternate combinations, igniting an awareness of impermanence.
Things come together and fall apart. Things come together again and fall apart again. My work gestures towards collapsing the borders between fixed realities and investigates the relationships of interdependency that bind them. Every arrangement of connection and every part of the whole is subject to a productive tension. Between fixed and flexible, construction and destruction, ruined and repaired, a transformation is taking place. Untethering as things retether. I choreograph spatial narratives that reveal a desire to rebuild the link between humans and our natural environment. I draw upon cyclical themes like growth and decay inherent in nature as a system for processing personal and collective grief—the moment when things fall apart—and how we can view these cycles through a lens of healing.
Through a balance of negative space and form I’m constructing a tangible measure of absence. In combination with materials that have been used, consumed, and discarded, I’m exposing an uncompromising touch of mortality and the fragility of our relationship to the environment. My work calls attention to our momentary belonging on this planet—the space in between what is certain and unknown—deeping our thoughts of our human need to dwell and how we inhabit the earth.
My sculptural forms, that initially appear to be rigid and geometric, become fluid and organic through physical activation. I process my materials by fragmenting them into modular units and weaving them together, addressing the fundamental idea of connection at play. At the same time, there’s an impression the work can always be reformulated along a continuum of alternate combinations, igniting an awareness of impermanence.
Things come together and fall apart. Things come together again and fall apart again. My work gestures towards collapsing the borders between fixed realities and investigates the relationships of interdependency that bind them. Every arrangement of connection and every part of the whole is subject to a productive tension. Between fixed and flexible, construction and destruction, ruined and repaired, a transformation is taking place. Untethering as things retether. I choreograph spatial narratives that reveal a desire to rebuild the link between humans and our natural environment. I draw upon cyclical themes like growth and decay inherent in nature as a system for processing personal and collective grief—the moment when things fall apart—and how we can view these cycles through a lens of healing.
Through a balance of negative space and form I’m constructing a tangible measure of absence. In combination with materials that have been used, consumed, and discarded, I’m exposing an uncompromising touch of mortality and the fragility of our relationship to the environment. My work calls attention to our momentary belonging on this planet—the space in between what is certain and unknown—deeping our thoughts of our human need to dwell and how we inhabit the earth.
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Selected Exhibitions
2023 NCECA Juried Student Exhibition, 57th NCECA Conference, DAAP Reed Gallery, Cincinnati, OH Tennessee Triennial for Contemporary Art Student Exhibition, Gallery 1010, Knoxville, TN It’s a Trap!, Gallery 1010, Knoxville, TN Functional Beauty, Gallery 1010, Knoxville, TN 76th Annual Student Art Competition, Ewing Gallery, Knoxville, TN 2022 Vessel: Embodiment, Autonomy, and Ornament in Wood, The Museum for Art in Wood, Philadelphia, PA The Shape I'm In, 44th Annual Tri State Sculptors Conference, Richardson Arts Center, Spartanburg, SC Octocalypse, Downtown Gallery, Knoxville, TN Your Hand in the Shape of a Cup of Tea -- Just This, Able Trade Gallery, Knoxville, TN Party of Five, Sandra J. Blain Galleries, Arrowmont School of Arts and Craft, Gatlinburg, TN One Year Later, Appalachian Center for Craft, Cookeville, TN 2021 Longue Durée, Holland Tunnel Gallery, Newburgh, NY Artists-In-Residence, Wolpert Gallery, Gatlinburg, TN 2020 Earthbound, Stride Art Gallery, New York, NY Collective Expeditions II, International Society of Antiquaries Collective, BSB Gallery, Trenton, NJ 2019 Unchanging Window, Geoffrey A. Wolpert Gallery, Arrowmont School of Arts and Craft, Gatlinburg, TN Collective Expeditions I, International Society of Antiquaries Collective, SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge, NY If Wishes Were Horses, Queen City 15 Gallery, Poughkeepsie, NY 2018 Up Close, Lazy Susan Gallery, New York, NY Time Travelers, Dorsky Museum, New Paltz, NY Labor & Materials II, 21c Museum, Bentonville, AK 2017 Dusklittle, Orange County Arts Council, Newburgh, NY Green Space, Newburgh Open Studios, Newburgh, NY Dusklit, Seligmann Homestead, Sugarloaf, NY Dia, Matteawan Gallery, Beacon, NY 2016 Re-Union, B Minus Gallery, Santa Ana, CA Labor & Materials I, 21c Museum, Oklahoma, OK 2015 Pop Stars, 21c Museum, Cincinnati OH Convocation, The Carnegie, Covington, KY On Labor, Pearlman Gallery, Cincinnati, OH 2014 Foreign Bodies, Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati OH Intermission, Chidlaw Gallery, Cincinnati, OH Honorable Mention, New York Studio Residency Program, Brooklyn, NY Publications 2022 Basketry+, Summer Issue 2021 Divide Magazine, May/June Issue No. 3 2020 Under The Bridge, Installation - Autumn Issue Art Market Magazine, June Issue 48 2019 Friend of the Artist, Volume 9 2018 Chronogram, December Issue, Hudon Valley, NY Artrepreneur, Art Business Journal, November Issue, New York, NY Roll Magazine, TIME TRAVELERS, June Issue, Hudson Valley, NY |