Look Closer
“I develop a dialogue with each material that dictates the forms” —Tara Donovan Accumulation becomes transformation as sculptor Tara Donovan turns ordinary, manufactured objects into astounding works of art. Massive quantities of mundane items—straight pins, buttons, plastic cups, Scotch tape—are stacked, looped, twisted and folded to determine “how the material will behave.” In this way, Donovan creates astonishing visual experiences that attest to the poetic wonder of close looking and bigger thinking about the materials that surround us. This exhibition, the first museum survey in Donovan’s career, demonstrates the artist’s ingenuity with 17 extraordinary
works, including an installation created especially for the ICA. Much of the artist’s work draws comparisons to art of the 1960s, such as Minimalism, with its plain geometric forms, and Conceptualism, which shifted emphasis onto the creative process. Like the artists of this earlier generation, Donovan uses grids, cubes and repetition, however her sculptures build upon and extend their ideas, transforming familiar materials into unique works of art. Donovan’s sculptures are deliberately integrated with their architectural setting. In some, materials pool directly on the
Bluffs, 2006 Three versions; buttons and glue Mugrabi Collection Ovitz Family Collection, Los Angeles Private collection
floor; in others, the gallery walls or ceiling act as a frame for the work. Donovan refers to this aspect of her art as “siteresponsive,” since its forms may adapt to subtly different architectural spaces. We invite you to use this guide as you move through the exhibition and to take a close look at Donovan’s sculptures and the rooms they inhabit. It is this careful inspection, co-curator Jen Mergel points out, which “rewards our curiosity.”
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Hear more on the ICA’s free audio commentary. Borrow an iPod from the admissions desk, access on your cell phone at 617-231-4055, or download to your MP3 player at www.icaboston.org/gofurther. POSS FAMILY MEDIATHEQUE
A new video explores Tara Donovan’s creative process and her focus on the interaction between the visitor, the artwork, and the gallery space. Available October 14. Public Tours The ICA offers public tours of Tara Donovan on Target Free Thursday Nights at 6 pm and each Saturday and Sunday at 1 pm. Tours are free with museum admission and leave from the lobby. ICA interpretive programs are made possible by the significant support of the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Nathaniel Saltonstall Arts Fund.
Untitled (Toothpicks), 1996 Wooden toothpicks Private collection (Reproduced below)
Untitled (Pins), 2004 Straight pins Collection of the artist
Untitled (Glass), 2004 Tempered glass Courtesy of PaceWildenstein, New York
From afar these cubes may resemble shimmering mesh, icy crystals, or tangled splinters. A closer look at these sculptures reveals the massive number of toothpicks, pins and glass sheets the artist used to create them. Donovan’s repetition of the same form using different materials highlights the uniqueness of each: pins’ shiny thinness, toothpicks’ dry lattice, or the opaque, narrow openings through once transparent glass. While the cube has been explored by artists from the 1960s for its stable wholeness, here Donovan fractures the solid form, relying only on the unseen forces of friction, gravity, and inertia to contain loose parts as a coherent whole.
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Untitled (Plastic Cups), 2006/2008 Plastic cups Courtesy of Arne and Milly Glimcher
“I assemble units that I reproduce and collect in various ways to discover how they will behave visually in a population.”
Donovan stacks over three million 7-ounce cups at varying heights within a sprawling rectangular perimeter. Although presented in a grid—a system artists of the 1960s utilized for its rational geometric order—Donovan’s cups defy containment. The stacks of cups tilt and lean in irregular undulating patterns. The artist’s simple gesture of stacking unleashes an unpredictable energy of seemingly boundless expansion.
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Untitled (Paper Plates), 2005 Three versions; paper plates and hot glue Beth Rudin DeWoody Wanda Kownacki, Courtesy of Edward Boyer Fine Art Advisory Ovitz Family Collection, Los Angeles
Bluffs, 2006 Three versions; buttons and glue Mugrabi Collection Ovitz Family Collection, Los Angeles Private collection (Reproduced in Introduction)
Donovan’s works do not simply echo nature’s structures, but also evoke its infinite variation, unfolding motion, and continuous evolution. She stacks buttons in a cumulative process akin to the formation of cave-dwelling stalagmites, and clusters bunches of paper plates in what resembles underwater coral sponges. The artist highlights details in each material to animate these forms: The teetering columns of tiny plastic discs catch light in every button hole. Her layered spheres of paper discs trap shadows that shift along their scalloped edges as we pass.
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Untitled (Mylar), 2008 Mylar and hot glue Courtesy of Stephen Friedman Gallery
“My work might appear ‘organic’ or ‘alive’ specifically because my process mimics, in the most elementary sense, basic systems of growth found in nature.”
Mylar’s pliable shiny surface allows Donovan to funnel light’s reflection and absorption in the folds of these spore-like mounds. The work sprawls across the gallery floor, as if an otherworldly metallic garden through which we navigate. Donovan’s work activates our shifting perception of light and space. Its placement choreographs our movement to trigger the fluctuating contrasts of dark shadow and bright glare within its hollows.
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Moiré, 2005 Adding machine paper Courtesy of PaceWildenstein, New York (Reproduced below)
Untitled (Mylar Tape), 2008 Polyester metallized film tape Courtesy of PaceWildenstein, New York
In Moiré, oversized rolls of adding machine paper capture the movement of shadows in the thin slits between their coils. In Untitled (Mylar Tape), tiny silvered hoops cling to the walls, reflections bouncing between each ring. Although both works harness a simple looping gesture that reacts with light, Donovan achieves wide-ranging effects with their distinct texture, density, and composition.
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Nebulous, 2002 Scotch tape Collection of Andrea and Marc Glimcher
Nebulous appears like a mist growing from the gallery floor. The work’s title hints at the uncertain perceptual experience created with none other than “invisible” and “magic” Scotch tape. Donovan looped innumerable yards into the irregular airy weave that hovers at our feet. Using such familiar material, she suggests both fleeting emergence and fragile presence, and the potential to visually transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.
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Haze, 2005 Translucent plastic drinking straws Collection of Tony Ganz
“I see my work as perhaps having a more dynamic relationship to the spaces where it is presented.”
Following on 1960s artists’ “site-specific” installations that relate directly to a fixed location, Donovan explores a more flexible model she terms “site-responsive,” as her works expand or contract to merge directly with the dimensions in each space they are exhibited. Haze fills the given length of the gallery wall with what resembles a rolling fogbank, but is in fact millions of clear drinking straws. The entire volume is held in place by the corners of the room, with the walls acting as a frame for the work’s seemingly infinite expanse.
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Untitled (Styrofoam Cups), 2004/2008 Styrofoam cups and glue Courtesy of PaceWildenstein, New York
Donovan gathers Styrofoam cups in what resembles a swelling mass materializing from the gallery ceiling. Each vessel diffuses the light above into a soft glow of particles. Through this material and its location, the installation evokes the buoyancy of ethereal clouds or massive icebergs drifting overhead. Untitled (Styrofoam Cups) exempliďŹ es how Donovan’s works often embody paradox: it is dense yet light, brimming yet hollow, literal yet poetic.
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Untitled, 2008 Polyester film Courtesy of PaceWildenstein, New York
“Because the surfaces of my work do often shift and follow the perspective of the viewer, there is a perceptual movement that coincides with a person’s physical movement within the gallery space.” In an opening cut through the gallery wall, Dovovan unspools clear plastic sheeting in countless folds that compress under its own weight. Viewed top to bottom, the work evolves from loose curls to more compact layers as the weight builds. Walking along its length, we can compare how the work variously filters the warm yellow artificial light on one side and the cool hues of daylight on the opposite side. This flow of folds and light also echoes our own motion as the plastic reflects the kaleidoscopic shuffle of our passing shadows. With no inherent limit to their infinite variation and expansive depth, Donovan’s works continue to push the boundaries of what a sculptural “object” might be.
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Biography
Tara Donovan was born 1969 in New York City. She studied at the School of Visual Arts, New York; Corcoran College of Art and Design, Washington, D.C.; and Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond. Her most recent solo exhibitions have been mounted by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH (2003), Rice University Art Gallery, Houston, TX (2003), the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2004), Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA (2004), the Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO (2006), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (2007). Donovan is recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the inaugural 2005 Calder Foundation Prize and a 2008 MacArthur Fellowship “genius” grant, which acknowledges outstanding achievement “on the very edge of discovery” and “new synthesis.”
Portrait of Tara Donovan at work, 2005. Photograph by Ellen Labenski Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York
Talks TARA DONOVAN IN CONVERSATION WITH LAWRENCE WESCHLER
Tuesday, October 14, 7:30 pm As Tara Donovan opens her first major museum survey, the Brooklyn-based sculptor discusses her work with Lawrence Weschler, a writer known for making surprising connections between seemingly disparate ideas and images. Tickets: $12 general admission; $8 members, students, and seniors
LUNCHTIME GALLERY TALKS New!
Take a break to nourish your body and your mind. ICA curators share their perspectives on working with today’s artists in a program tailor-made for your lunch hour. Our speakers will provide food for thought; the Water Café will take care of the rest. Jen Mergel, Associate Curator Thursday, October 16, 12 pm Jen Mergel/Nicholas Baume, Chief Curator Thursday, December 11, 12 pm FREE with museum admission. Tickets are available first-come, first-served one hour before the program. Ticket holders receive a 10% discount at the Water Café. May not be combined with any other offer.
Courses
Families
LOOK HERE: INTRODUCTION TO CONTEMPORARY SCULPTURE
PLAY DATE: BEYOND THE ARTIST’S HAND
Tuesdays, October 21 and 28, November 4, 11, and 18 11 am – 12:30 pm Satisfy some of your curiosity about contemporary sculpture through this five-week program. Led by Randi Hopkins, this program will offer diverse perspectives on what it means to make and appreciate sculpture today. Fee: $120; $100 members, students and seniors. Participants receive a 10% discount on items in the Water Café and ICA Store. May not be combined with any other offer. Tara Donovan education programs are made possible by a gift from Bruce and Robert Beal in honor of Barbara Krakow.
Saturday, October 25, 10 am – 4 pm Looking for an awe-inspiring adventure? Discover how artist Tara Donovan uses everyday materials to create sculptures that imitate natural forms even as they seem to defy the laws of nature. Catch performances in the galleries by Underground Railway Theater. For details log onto www.icaboston.org. All activities are designed for children ages 5 – 12 and adults to do together, and no prior registration is necessary. Space is limited, and free tickets may be required for selected theater events; these will be available first-come, first-served in the lobby on the day of the event only. This Play Date is sponsored by Nancy W. Adams. Activities in the Bank of America Art Lab are made possible by
Generous support of ICA Youth Education is provided by JP Morgan Chase Foundation, the Cabot Family Charitable Trust, and the Fuller Foundation.
In the ICA Store Tara Donovan, a comprehensive monograph, includes approximately 70 reproductions of all of the artist’s works to date. The hardcover volume features an essay by exhibition curators Nicholas Baume and Jen Mergel, and an extended interview with the artist by Lawrence Weschler. The exhibition and publication were generously supported by Chuck and Kate Brizius and Barbara Lee. Media Sponsor
THE INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART/BOSTON
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