Tara Donovan, Untitled (Styrofoam cups), 2008, Installation dimensions variable, Styrofoam cups and hot glue
(Image taken from wool felt and textiles blog )



Tara Donovan

       Tara Donovan graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York in the late eighties and really began showing her work in the mid to late nineties. She is one of the forefronts in everyday material installations (along with Sarah Sze). Guidelines imposed by herself are what help her to execute her work, normally she chooses one material (normally from what is around her) and figures out a way of creating a mass of that medium, she lets the item dictate the form working with it instead of against it and most of the time she creates installations that are site specific and temporary. She has said this in regards to her object choices:

      “I don’t have a running list of materials I want to work with. I never know exactly what the thing will be. It’s pretty arbitrary, honestly. I’m attracted to transparency and luminosity.”(taken from this article about her new show)

        With her materials she is able to create these beautiful organic realms in which the actual object seems to come second to the form, it is no longer about what that object's function is within the real world it is about the aesthetics within the space. She elevates the everyday object into awe inspiring sea scapes, bluffs, anenomes, and other organic forms found in nature.





Tara Donovan, Bluffs, 2005, buttons and glue, Ace Gallery

(Image taken from this interview with Donovan herself)



       Just looking at these pictures online makes me think that anything is possible, she creates this incredibly tedious forms (of course with the help of assistants) that are so time consuming, but she is able to get them done and is constantly working on new ones; that is a huge feat even for a whole team of people.

       She is constantly looking at the items around her as possibilities for sculptures and installations, the inspiration for them does not come first (or so it seems) but it comes from the material itself, she is not coming up with an idea and finding the material that will fit within it, she experiments with each item seeing its capabilities and builds from there. Within a world where we are constantly trying to push everything to the limit and make everything work for us, it is pretty refreshing that Donovan is instead pushing herself to the limit to accomodate the natural properties of the materials she chooses to work from.

        Starting just this month (actually 5 days ago), Tara Donovan is being shown at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Her show is entitled Current 35: Tara Donovan and is running from May 5th to October 7th 2012. Some of the pieces being exhibited include: Haze her wall installation of drinking straws that muffles noise and looks almost like cloud forms, Bluffs her floor sculpture comprised entirely of buttons mimicking the natural form of sea cliffs or even coral, Unititled (2008) abstracted curves of mylar pieces rolled onto each other, and many more. It is a chance to see a lot of Donovan's work all in one place.



Tara Donovan, Detail of Bluffs, 2005, buttons and glue, Ace Gallery
(Image taken from same source as image above)



Tara Donovan, Colony, 2002, Pencils and glue, Ace Gallery

(taken from same source as Bluffs)



Erwin Redl, Crystal Matrix, 2011, In Design Miami, Ace Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
(Image taken from this anti-utopias review )

Erwin Redl: Crystal Matrix

Shown at Ace Gallery In Los Angeles, CA
5514 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036


Erwin Redl is an Austrian artist that has been working within the field of light and sound installation since the early nineties. He actually got an MFA in computer art and was always very interested in visual respresentation of both sound and technology, finding a way to visually map two very illusive things. With his Crystal Matrix exhibit in 2011, he was a part of a design project with Swarovski Crystal Palace to collaborate with them to create and reinterpret the tradition of chandelier making.
Redl interpreted this assignment with his niche in LED work. He put a various array of crystals supplied to him on rotating pedestals, he shone LED lights on them to make them seem as if they were glowing from within, and he also incorporated sound to create an all over sensory engaging experience. He creates these worlds of light and sound in an attempt to engage the viewer completely.
Quoted by Ace Gallery on one of his currents exhibitions, Redl says about his work
“Only corporeal motion and the subsequent discovery of all aspects of the space (visual, corporeal, acoustic, social, etc.) slowly reveal the nature of the piece. Those aspects are highly subjective, based

on private, individual memories of the viewer, yet they are experienced in a communal

setting which leads to often very surprising interactions between strangers during

exhibitions.”
He is working with a fleeting material and medium, light can be affected by anyone that walks by. Just put a hand under or in front of one of his LED's
This artist has made me realize just how important it is to see a show in person, while the pictures may be so alluring, I am sure it is absolutely nothing in comparison to the actual installation.



Sarah Sze, Installation shot of Infinite Line, 2011, Various Materials, Shown at the Asia Society Museum in NY
(Image taken from the accessible art ny blog )

Sarah Sze: Infinite Line
Exhibited December 13, 2011 through March 25, 2012
at the Asia Society Museum
725 Park Ave.
New York, NY 10021

     Sarah Sze has been at the forefront of installation work since she started in the early nineties. She is the queen of the everyday materials; having a way of both highlighting the everyday quality of materials and making her viewers forget about the original purpose of each item. Taking things that are mass produced and easily purchased, she is able to make these overwhelming, detail oriented worlds that captivate her viewers from the tiniest screw to the vehicle chopped in half, hanging off of a ballister.
     At the end of last year, Sze did something a little bit different even for herself, she started to work with two dimensional images in relation to her full scale installation works. In her Infinite Line show, Sze was successfully able to extend the lines of both three dimensional and two dimensional objects in relation to one another as well as the context of the space and the viewer standing before it. With this show, she is most intrigued by perception, the ability of her audience to have different viewpoints of her work; at once you see the larger sculpture, at other times you zoom into the tiny details all the while that focus is changing the way in which one perceives the work both compositionally and spatially. Her viewers can delight in once again being treated to something so special. Even though she is working with found materials, the way that she installs her work seems to be so delicate and thoughtful, everything is in its place and is in conversation with everything around it.
    To find out more information about Sarah Sze's process for her Infinite Line exhibit watch this clip of her on youtube.
     Or read this great review.
    Definitely investigate her further, you will be captivated by both her process and her highly engaging installation work.

Sarah Sze, Installation shot of Infinite Line exhibit, 2011, Asia Society Museum of Art, NY
(Image taken from Asia Society Museum website )

Peter Rehberg, Stephen O' Malley, Dennis Cooper and Gisele Vienne, Last Spring: A Prequel, 2011,
 Installation shot, currently on view at the Whitney Biennial 2012
(Image taken from Gothamist photographer Katie Sokoler )

Peter Rehberg, Stephen O'Malley,
Dennis Cooper,
and Gisele Vienne:
Last Spring A Prequel
Currently on view at the Whitney Biennial
March 1st- May 27th 2012
945 Madison Avenue at 75th St.
New York, NY 10021


  Up on the fourth floor of the Whitney Biennial, amidst the performance spaces lies a collaborative piece by Gisele Vienne, Dennis Cooper, Stephen O'Malley and Peter Rehberg. It sits almost within a little white walled cubicle, like a transition space from a video piece to a dressing room for performers. There is one little white bench for viewers to sit on and everyone else has to stand up against the wall.
     Last Spring: A Prequel makes use of a small animatronic youth with a Chuckie-like doll attached to his arm. It has the feel of a horror movie and the sound of a schizophrenic person talking to themself. It starts out with the animatronic boy opening his eyes and breathing, it doesn't sound like a lot but the mannequin is engineered to do both of those mimicking how humans do it; he blinks and his chest expands and contracts. When I first saw it I was conflicted, I kept expecting this thing to start walking around, to realize that it was an actual person dressed as a mannequin, but my expectations were not met yet I was not disappointed. The young boy goes through a manic story of youth being ripped away, of finding this demonic doll, of killing (and enjoying it), and of being possesed by the doll on his arm... all the while he is fighting with the blood soaked doll for confirmation that he is a real human being. It was so unsettling and uncanny that this animatronic would be so vehemently wanting it to be known that he was a real boy, while this doll (who is not supposed to be real either) cuts him down and reminds him that he is not real. The various layers of artificiality juxtaposed with the uncanniness of the illusion of reality made for an engrossing installation and performance. I felt, watching it, that I was being transported into this labrynth with the mannequin; I was in his world questioning whether or not I was real. Maybe I was the mannequin and he was actually the live being. Uncanny does not begin to pinpoint exactly the uneasiness that this piece created, but I think it will have to suffice.