Nebulous is an appropriate title for Tara Donovan’s installation, which rises from the floor like a fog conjured improbably by Scotch tape looped in seemingly endless spiral formations and graded hills. First shown at New York’s Ace Gallery in 2002, the work is on view in the 39-year-old’s first major museum survey, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston from October 10 through January 4, 2009. Sixteen additional pieces made of accumulations of commonplace materials—a cubed haystack constructed from a half million toothpicks, for example, and a mountain of stacked straws creeping up the wall in an ethereal haze— are also on display. For Donovan, a surplus store can be a portal to the sublime. The show heads to Cincinnati’s Contemporary Arts Center in February.

"Uncommon Art" originally appeared in the October 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's October 2008 Table of Contents.