Tara Donovan

Tara Donovan was born in New York in 1969, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn.   Her first solo exhibition was held at the Ace Gallery in NYC, making her an instant success.  I became interested in Donovan when I was introduced to her ability to turn mundane everyday objects into organic pieces, flowing from one end to the other and giving the object the ability to be extraordinary.

Donovan’s piece Untitled is a cloud-like structure that is made solely from Styrofoam cups and hot glue. The piece is quite large in scale, measuring in at 6 ft. high, 20 ft. wide, and 19.2 ft. deep, and it seems to flow from one end of a room to the other.  The cups are glued to each side, with the interior opening positioned towards the floor, letting the light from above illuminate through the piece.  The cups are somewhat altered in form, squeezed together at the sides to make a flat surface to hot glue them together.  This gives the cloud dimension within the form, making parts of the piece seem darker than others.  Due to the light and the change in form of the cups, the cloud looks more like a potential ominous cloud with the ability to open itself and drop rain on the audience below, instead of holding only a white fluffy cloud appearance.

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

Donovan has another piece titled Untitled that amazed me when I found out the material that comprised the piece.  This Untitled is made of Mylar, where Donovan shaped the Mylar sheets into cones and then attached the cones together with hot glue.  The most amazing part of this piece is the light play that occurs when light bounces off the shiny Mylar creating shadows within the piece and giving it depth.  Between the organic circular form, the light play on the silver material creating black shadows within the depth, and the structure of the form as a whole, I envision this piece to represent a molecule.  But I wonder how it would look in a room with a disco light.  I imagine the varied colors bouncing though and off the piece would lighten up even the darkest, bleakest space. 

Untitled, 2009. 

Mylar and hot glue. 

18 1/4 x 32 1/2 x 30 in. (46.4 x 82.6 x 76.2 cm). 

Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Contemporary Art Council, 2009.24