By Travis Diehl June 10, 2025
Megan Plunkett’s solo show at Dracula’s Revenge this May was suspiciously concise. Three photographs, printed at medium scale, depicted the same can of Pepsi. These are three portraits, even though the subject is an object (a can) and the idioms of the shots evoke cinematic drama (the black backdrop) or product photography (the white). The repetition of the same can, with the same pattern of scuffs and dents and the same piece of red duct tape covering the Pepsi branding, draws the viewer’s attention: the can is the story. For example, why is the logo obscured? How do we know it’s Pepsi? Is it empty or is it full?
The cropping and composition of each photo are abstract, but in different ways, ticking through a trio of stereotypical or common backgrounds. In the leftmost image, the can seems to float in an untextured black void; its bottom is visible, as if nothing supports it. The print is dim, almost dirty. To the right, the can sits on a white seamless in full, porny flash. The camera angle is higher and a crescent of the top and the tip of the pull tab, possibly popped, creep into the frame.
In this company, the center image beams with personality. Here the can is shot straight on, centered evenly in the frame, grazing the top and bottom edges of the picture. It tilts jauntily to the right, forming a peaked triangle with the slice of blurry brick wall clipping one side of the backdrop. The effect is something like a school picture, where just enough information is given to suggest a setting—this piece of brick corner where the bad kids drink contraband cola—without distracting from the real subject in all its unforgiving detail.
The photos depict a can of Pepsi from the 1980s, although this isn’t necessarily obvious. The slogan “California’s Choice” or the retro font it’s written in might give it away. This text is the only identifying mark on the can other than red and white geometric fields and a piece of duct tape in a nearly identical cherry shade. Except, now you see it—the sliver of the round logo peeking out from the tape near the can’s rim. Why the disguise? One obvious possibility is that the can has served as a prop, in a setting where recognizable branding would be distracting or perhaps unlicensed. The evocation of “California” suggests Hollywood, especially paired with the fashion-editorial vibe of the triptych. The press release, too, mentions David Lynch (and also, incongruously, Coca-Cola). Sure there’s a surreality to the movie star apotheosis of this beverage. But I don’t think it’s common practice to simply deface name brand soda in order to have a drink in your film. And the can, being three decades old or so, seems much older than the tape, which looks fresh and supple. Something doesn’t track. The can is vintage and specific enough to be kept around, even a collector’s item—yet it’s been anonymized, defaced.
At first, the photos present as formal studies, still lifes comprised of a single object and no table; but eventually their vagueness, not to say evasiveness, encourages scrutiny, and the photos take on a more forensic character. There are details here after all—clues—but ultimately the can’s defining characteristic is its redaction, not so much because the tape covers up information (which you can suss out other ways) but because it was covered at all. The tape on this can distinguishes it from every other can on the bottling line. We’re led to lean on a reading of the photographs as portraying an inner truth, the way portraits are said to reveal the sitter. It’s virtuosic, in a way, to produce still lifes of such simplicity that nonetheless act like portraits. Self-portraits, even, since the artist was also born in the 1980s.
Travis Diehl is a critic, writer and editor and is a recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant and the Rabkin Prize in Visual Arts Journalism.
MEGAN PLUNKETT "The Hollywood Upstairs 02" 2025. Courtesy the artist; Dracula's Revenge, New York; and Emalin, London. Photo: Jason Mandella.
MEGAN PLUNKETT "The Hollywood Upstairs 03" 2025. Courtesy the artist; Dracula's Revenge, New York; and Emalin, London. Photo: Jason Mandella.
MEGAN PLUNKETT Installation View at Dracula's Revenge, 2025. Courtesy the artist; Dracula's Revenge, New York; and Emalin, London. Photo: Jason Mandella.