ART-PRESENTATION: Tara Donovan-Compositions

Left: Tara Donovan, Composition (Cards), 2017, styrene cards and glue, 56.5 x 56.5 x 10.2 cm, © Tara Donovan, Pace Gallery Archive. Right: Tara Donovan, Composition (Cards) [Detail], 2017, styrene cards and glue, 56.5 x 56.5 x 10.2 cm, © Tara Donovan, Pace Gallery ArchiveFor the last 20 years, Tara Donovan uses commonplace consumer materials to create her dazzling sculptural installations. Her large-scale abstract works utilize systematic arrangements of thousands or even millions of units. Donovan has been recognized for her commitment to process and her ability to discover how the inherent physical characteristics of an object might allow it to be transformed into art.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Pace Gallery Archive

The most recent series of works by Tara Donovan are on show on her solo exhibition “Compositions”. Tara Donovan’s work always begins with the properties of a single material. Typically, Donovan selects an everyday, mass-produced item that is so familiar to us that it has escaped our notice. Scotch tape, toothpicks, pencils, and clear drinking straws are among these items she has chosen as artistic media.  The results are large-scale abstract floor and wall works suggestive of landscapes, clouds, cellular structures and even mold or fungus. She considers patterning, configuration, and the play of light when determining the structure of her works but the final form evolves from the innate properties and structures of the material itself. In her words, “It is not like I’m trying to simulate nature. It’s more of a mimicking of the way of nature, the way things actually grow”. For her new series of works Donovan layered and heaped styrene cards suggesting stalagmites or wind-eroded outcroppings, the new series inverts the sculptural logic of voluminous horizontal stacking by the use of the frame as a means to control the density and orientation of the styrene cards. Each “Composition” develops through an improvisational process of incremental stacking that slowly evolves into a unique set of strategic rules that guides the completion of the work. The convergence of the styrene cards becomes a dynamic two-dimensional surface pattern of parallel lines produced by the edges of each card standing perpendicular to the wall. Combining the linearity of drawing with the materiality of painting, the surface gains sculptural volume when a viewer moves around the work, revealing the depth inherent to the negative spaces between each of the cards. Presented in dense groupings of individual works, the exhibition also subverts canonical notions of Minimalist seriality by playing with the anonymous, mechanical format of repeated objects. While seemingly a display of inert monochrome works from afar, the curious viewer is rewarded with highly responsive, undulating fields of material upon closer inspection.

Info: Pace Gallery, 6 Burlington Gardens, London, Duration: 24/1-9/3/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.pacegallery.com

Left: Tara Donovan, Composition (Cards), 2017, styrene cards and glue, 99.7 x 99.7 x 10.2 cm, © Tara Donovan, Pace Gallery Archive. Right: Tara Donovan, Composition (Cards) [Detail], 2017, styrene cards and glue, 99.7 x 99.7 x 10.2 cm, © Tara Donovan, Pace Gallery Archive
Left: Tara Donovan, Composition (Cards), 2017, styrene cards and glue, 99.7 x 99.7 x 10.2 cm, © Tara Donovan, Pace Gallery Archive. Right: Tara Donovan, Composition (Cards) [Detail], 2017, styrene cards and glue, 99.7 x 99.7 x 10.2 cm, © Tara Donovan, Pace Gallery Archive

 

Left: Tara Donovan, Composition (Cards), 2017, styrene cards and glue, 56.5 x 56.5 x 10.2 cm, © Tara Donovan, Pace Gallery Archive. Right: Tara Donovan, Composition (Cards) [Detail], 2017, styrene cards and glue, 56.5 x 56.5 x 10.2 cm, © Tara Donovan, Pace Gallery Archive
Left: Tara Donovan, Composition (Cards), 2017, styrene cards and glue, 56.5 x 56.5 x 10.2 cm, © Tara Donovan, Pace Gallery Archive. Right: Tara Donovan, Composition (Cards) [Detail], 2017, styrene cards and glue, 56.5 x 56.5 x 10.2 cm, © Tara Donovan, Pace Gallery Archive

 

Left: Tara Donovan, Composition (Cards), 2017, styrene cards and glue, 56.5 x 56.5 x 10.2 cm, © Tara Donovan, Pace Gallery Archive. Right: Tara Donovan, Composition (Cards) [Detail], 2017, styrene cards and glue, 56.5 x 56.5 x 10.2 cm, © Tara Donovan, Pace Gallery Archive
Left: Tara Donovan, Composition (Cards), 2017, styrene cards and glue, 56.5 x 56.5 x 10.2 cm, © Tara Donovan, Pace Gallery Archive. Right: Tara Donovan, Composition (Cards) [Detail], 2017, styrene cards and glue, 56.5 x 56.5 x 10.2 cm, © Tara Donovan, Pace Gallery Archive