ART-PRESENTATION: Tara Donovan-Fieldwork
Tara Donovan creates sculpture, drawings, prints, and large-scale installations that transform the banality of everyday objects into the extraordinary. Known for her commitment to process, she has earned acclaim for her ability to discover the inherent physical characteristics of an object and for her exploration into the nature of accumulation.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: MCA Denver Archive
The exhibition “Tara Donovan: Fieldwork” occupies the entire Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (MCA Denver) and celebrates Tara Donovan’s distinct and varied practice. Often known for her transformation of neutral or mundane materials like drinking straws, rubber bands, and index cards into elaborate, mind-bending objects that evoke the natural world or other organic material. Although her work tends to favor biological forms rather than a rectilinear grid system, Donovan’s use of singular materials and adherence to rule-based systems has aligned her with the legacies of Minimalist artists such as Sol LeWitt and Eva Hesse. It is the first time that Donovan’s wall-based and freestanding works are installed together, in order to understand fully how the artist re-imagines everyday materials. A remix of older and recent open up new areas of dialogue within her practice and enable viewers to make connections across time and subject matter. The exhibition is about how, through labor (especially repetitive action), order and structure can give way to the unpredictable, where reason yields to faith, and the mundane cedes to the marvelous, employing the creative act to seduce visually and, in doing so, override what we know to be factual. Although she was born in New York City, Donovan grew up in Rockland County in a small town called Blauvelt. Donovan’s studies began at the School of Visual Arts (New York) in 1987-88. Donovan received her BFA at the Corcoran College of Art and Design (Washington DC) in 1991. It wasn’t until college, at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington DC that she began to consider herself a sculptor. On her time at Corcoran College, Donovan said “I think I was learning how to think abstractly”. Tara went back to graduate school at Virginia Commonwealth University to complete a two-year program. While going to graduate school Tara worked full-time and also created works for a solo show in Washington DC. She earned her MFA at VCUarts, part of Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in 1999, when she also received her first interview in Articulate Contemporary Art Review. In 2000 Donovan participated in the Whitney Biennial. After that Donovan lived and worked as a waitress in New York when she finally was contacted by Doug Chrismas to show a work in the Ace Gallery in LA. This meeting was a breakthrough show for Donovan.
Info: Curator Nora Burnett Abrams, The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (MCA Denver), 1485 Delgany Street, Denver, Duration: 21/9/18-27/1/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 11:00-19:00, Sat-Sun 10:00-17:00, https://mcadenver.org
