tara donovan

Tara Donovan is an artist with enough talent and creativity to make plastic straws seem interesting. Her specialty is taking many copies of an everyday object and transforming them into something phenomenal. Enter her world and, in “Colony,” chunks of pencils transform into, depending on how far away you stand, either an array of skyscrapers or an infectious fungus spreading over the floor. In a 2003 installation called “Haze,” Donovan used over two million plastic straws on a 40-foot gallery wall to create an aesthetic effect both cloudlike and ephemeral. She has used Elmer’s Glue, Styrofoam cups, paper plates, and toothpicks in astronomic quantities create the last thing you ever thought you’d see from disposable kitchenware. Donovan, who says she thinks “in terms of infinity,” is refreshingly unique in her courageous and innovative ability to create large-scale marvels out of the commonplace.

Untitled, 2003
Styrofoam Cups, Hot Glue
6'(H) x 20'(W) x 19' 2"(D)
Ace Gallery New York

Artist’s Statement:
“My investigations into the properties of different media each address a specific trait that is unique to a given mass-produced material. By experimenting with the more phenomenological aspects of a material, my process develops through a kind of dialogue that leads to a specific repetitive action (e.g. stacking, bundling, heaping, etc.) that builds the work. The breadth and diversity of the consumer landscape has expanded to such a degree that the supply of materials that can be adapted to an artistic context seems limitless. The idea that art can be manufactured or that it can radically complicate the standard notions of value attached to mass-produced objects is no longer a point of serious contention in contemporary debates. I think the new fertile territory, for myself at least, encompasses a range of practices that capitalize on the iconic identities of commercial and industrial materials by pressing them further into the realm of abstract seduction. I prefer the phras e "site-responsive" to describe the affiliation of my works to the spaces they inhabit. While this term makes a convenient allusion to the chameleonic visuals I prefer to exploit, it also suggests a dependence on the architectural particulars and lighting conditions of a given space that environmentally impact the growth of my work in terms of scale, direction, and orientation. This reliance on spatial conditions is primarily responsible for forming the understanding of my works as "fields" of visual activity, which have been compared to everything from landscapes to biomorphic forms and even cellular structures.”

Untitled, 2003 (Detail)
Styrofoam Cups, Hot Glue
6'(H) x 20'(W) x 19' 2"(D)
Ace Gallery New York