NYAB Event - Tara Donovan "Untitled"

Tara Donovan "Untitled"

Lever House

This event has ended.

Tara Donovan's "Untitled" (2009) is an arrangement of translucent, apparently honeycombed, material set within a rectangular cutout in a wall and consists of 2,500 pounds of plastic sheeting loosely folded over and over onto itself until the material's elusive color, texture, and weight emerge. Viewers are able to walk around the piece and see through it from the building lobby or from the Park Avenue sidewalk. "You can see people moving on either side," Donovan said, "It actually creates a very kaleidoscopic sort of effect."
Like many of her pieces, this one began with a visit several years ago to an industrial surplus store where Donovan bought a roll of plastic sheeting, hundreds of pounds worth, for about $10, she said, "because I thought it might be handy around the studio... eventually I needed a bunch of the plastic for something else I was doing. I was spooling it off, and I thought, 'oh, that's actually really interesting, the way it folds on itself.' A lot of times, things are discovered in accidental ways." Tara Donovan is an inventive young sculptor whose installations bring wonder to the most common objects of everyday life. Donovan's site-specific, sculptural works transform ordinary accumulated materials into intriguing visual and physical installations. Choosing a single object or material, such as transparent drinking straws, scotch tape, styrofoam cups, or toothpicks, Donovan experiments with assembling them in different configurations. In 2007, Donovan created a 50 x 60 foot installation using over three million seven-ounce plastic drinking cups in rows of differing heights to create a serene and eerie icy landscape. The curvilinear forms of Donovan's Untitled (2009) are readily comparable to Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawing #999 (2001) that can be seen in the windows of the second floor of the Lever House from the outdoor plaza.

[Image: Tara Donovan "Untitled" (2009) plastic sheeting, dimensions variable]