KYLE COTTIER
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    • BY THE FORCE OF ITS OWN LUSTER, BURNED ITS WAY TROUGH
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WORK

You are looking at sculptural forms constructed through the slow accumulation of small, modular units. Each work is built piece by piece, thousands of repeated parts woven or bound together into porous, net-like structures. The surfaces are latticed, open, and permeable, allowing air and light to move freely through them.

The forms often take the shape of suspended nets or vessels, anchored in tension between walls, hovering just above the ground, or resting directly on it. They are usually caught between gestures — never fixed, but always leaning toward another state. They hold their structure through rope, knots, and joinery, creating objects that appear both fragile and resilient. Their scale shifts between intimate, body-sized pieces and larger architectural spans that invite the viewer to move around or through them.

Materials vary between wood, cord, and photographic imagery, but they are consistently worked by hand into repeating patterns. The structures reference basketry, weaving, and craft traditions while borrowing visual language from architectural elements like breeze blocks or scaffolding. At times, photographic surfaces are embedded into the work, merging image with structure so that a net or screen becomes both sculptural form and photographic support.

What you are looking at is not a closed object but an open system — a structure defined as much by absence as by presence. Emptiness is given shape, functioning as a container for memory, light, or passage. The forms suggest vessels, screens, or skeletal remains: objects that are at once protective and permeable, durable and provisional.
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These works aim to live in the space between categories — between handmade and machine-made, sculpture and photograph, ruin and repair. They prescribe a logic of infinite construction, continuously unmade and rebuilt, holding the ambiguity of structures that never fully resolve.
2026
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BY THE FORCE OF ITS OWN LUSTER, BURNED ITS WAY THROUGH
2025
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<+<+<+>+>+>
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THE LIGHT GREW AN EYE TO SEE ITSELF
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I AM WHAT HAPPENS BETWEEN DISTANCES
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WHY SHOULD OUR BODIES END AT THE SKIN
2024
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BORROWING SCENERY
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THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS RAIN, ONLY RAINDROPS
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WE DRAW A MAGIC CIRCLE
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UNTITLED ||||||| THIS IS HOW THINGS STAND BETWEEN US
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CRUST
2023
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ALL DAY LONG / WEARING A HAT / THAT WASN'T ON MY HEAD
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THIS IS HOW THINGS STAND BETWEEN US
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WOUND-MAN
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ORB APPEARED IN THE SKY, INTO ORBIT AROUND ME, A DROP, A WAVE, THE SHAPE OF LONGING
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LOOSELY OR TIGHTLY EVERYTHING FITS, EVEN THE WRIST TO THE ARM
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WHEN THINGS FALL APART
2022
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THE HEAD IS IN THE WATER BUT THE FACE DOESN'T GET WET
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HOW TO MAKE A SNOW ANGEL
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CARVING A SPACE FOR THE EARTH TO TREMBLE
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ROUGH TRAVEL FOR A RARE THING
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THIS IS WHAT THE BODY DOES
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THIS IS HOW TO THE WORLD WILL END
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EMPTY VESSELS MAKE THE LOUDEST SOUND
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BASSINET
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EEYYEEBBAALLLL
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HOLLOW, HHOOLLLLOOWW, NOT EMPTY
2021
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GONE FISHIN'
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HELL BUCKET
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GIMME SOME SKIN
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WHEN I AM AMONG THE TREES
2020
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THIS RIVER BENEATH THE RIVER
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MAGNOLIA
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BARK!
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IN THE SHELTER OF THE FOLD
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SWAN
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INVISIBLY RETURN / CONTINUUM OF GESTURES
2019
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FOR WANT OF A NAIL
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A GESTURE OF SURRENDER
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ADVERSARY! LIKE A ROARING LION SEEKING WHOM HE MAY DEVOUR
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HEAVEN IS EMPTY
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SOMETHING TOO BIG TO BE SEEN WAS PASSING OVER AND OVER ME
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ONE TREE IS LIKE ANOTHER TREE, BUT NOT TOO MUCH
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I WAS A TREE-GOD
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SOMETIMES I WISH WE WERE AN EAGLE
2018
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AND IN THE DISTANCE THE PASSING OF A GREAT BLACK CARIBOU
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IT'S ONLY FOREVER
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FEARLESSLY NOD AWAY / SEE THE FOREST FOR THE TREES
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FROM THE GROUND ITSELF, IN ONE BLUE FIELD
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HANGMAN
2017
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AND LOSE MY HEART ON THE BURNING SAND
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THE ULTRAMEGANATURAL
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STRIDULATE
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THE EDGE OF MY HAND
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TREES LOVE THE NESTS IN BIRDLAND
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YOU TAKE THIS LOVE
2015
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HOLDING BACK WHAT I CAN BUT THE POWER IS SO MUCH
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  • EXHIBITIONS
  • WORK
    • BY THE FORCE OF ITS OWN LUSTER, BURNED ITS WAY TROUGH
  • JOURNAL
  • Video
  • ABOUT