TARA DONOVAN

Known for her process- and system-based work across sculpture, installation, drawing, and printmaking, Donovanoften explores the talismanic qualities of everyday materials and objects, from buttons, Styrofoam cups, pencils, andpins to readymade screens and Slinky toys. Drawing on the formal language of Minimalism and Postminimalism,Donovan’s works both use and mis-use such nontraditional materials, transforming them into visually dazzlingcompositions without obliterating their fundamental essences or histories as objects from everyday life. Throughacts of accumulation, aggregation, and iteration, she transmutes her materials into shapeshifting works of art, whichexplore the possibilities—and limits—of human perception.

Marking her eleventh solo show with Pace, Stratagems will be the first exhibition dedicated to Donovan’s threedimensional sculptures mounted in New York since 2021. Comprising 11 new sculptures, the show will be presentedon the gallery’s seventh floor, which features floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Chelsea skyline. Built atopconcrete pedestals, each of Donovan’s vertically-oriented sculptures is composed of stacks of CDs, varying in heightfrom seven to ten feet tall. Breathing new life into the banal and outmoded medium of the compact disc, these workswill be activated by the natural light that floods the gallery space. Depending on the time of day and the viewer’sperspective, a range of optical effects unfold across the refractive surfaces of the works. Mutable and seeminglyalive, Donovan’s latest sculptures respond directly to the presence of the viewer’s body as it traverses space,reflecting her deep interest in the relationship between perceptual nuances and material transfigurations. At thesame time, these works invite the viewer to contemplate the transformation of an obsolete medium—once used forthe storage and transmission of digital information—into a prism for embodied experience.

During Frieze week in New York, choreographer Kim Brandt will stage a performance with six dancers amidDonovan’s exhibition at Pace. Presented by Pace Live—the gallery’s interdisciplinary platform for live artperformances, musical acts, conversations, and other events—Brandt’s performance will share certain affinities withDonovan’s work and riff on the sculptures in the show, developing through an accumulation of scores that invites dancers to explore spiraling as generative movement. Brandt, who has previously presented her work at MoMA PS1and SculptureCenter in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and many other institutions, hasdeveloped a practice that investigates the body as a dynamic material constantly negotiating context-specificrelationships to time and space. Further details about her performance at the gallery will be announced in duecourse.Stratagems will open during the final days of When Forms Come Alive, a group show at the Hayward Gallery inLondon featuring Donovan’s work, on view through May 6.

Press release courtesy Pace Gallery.