
Courtesy Ace Gallery and PaceWildenstein
Tara Donovan's 2002 work "Nebulous" is at the ICA Boston this month
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.