Tara Donovan

Renowned American artist Tara Donovan (born 1969) creates sculptural objects of enigmatic beauty by utilizing and experimenting with simple, everyday objects such as Scotch tape, drinking straws, paper plates, needles, plastic rods, toothpicks, mylar and buttons. At first these abstract objects resemble enlarged cellular structures, or living organisms from the depths of the ocean. "What I'm striving for is to be an alchemist and transcend the material," Donovan says. "It's more of a mimicking of the way of nature, the way things actually grow." Her method is also allied to an American Minimalist sculptural tradition that includes artists such as Sol LeWitt, Robert Irwin and James Turrell. This volume, with its handsome mirror-paper cover and debossing, presents eight works made between 2004 and 2012, as installed at the Arp Museum in Germany and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark.

New York-based artist Tara Donovan (born 1969) is emerging as one of the most talented artists of her generation, with a particular gift for site-specific installations. Donovan regenerates common manufactured materials such as Styrofoam, straight pins, straws and buttons into biomorphic shapes through singular accumulations. Inspired by system-based artists of the 1960s like Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt and Chuck Close, Donovan adheres to a process of utilizing one manufactured material with a unique solution for assemblage, whether it be stacking, gluing, sticking or folding. Her process transforms the prosaic products into spectacular organic forms that belie their material composition. This volume is published for the Milwaukee Art Museum’s exhibition (a part of their Currents series), which is comprised of several of her best known installations as well as new work. It includes a foreword by Chuck Close.