Chelsea Gallery Walk

Saturday in Chelsea...walking around, visiting galleries, having coffee with a friend.  I love Tara Donovan's large installations, and felt transported to see her extraordinary latest, Untitled (Mylar) 2011 at the Pace Gallery.  Tara's installation is dark, reflective, organic--it reminds me of stars, spores, a coral reef.  Walking in and out of Chelsea galleries is like spending the day in a dream--losing oneself in beauty, meaning, no-meaning, space... Tara Donovan press release:

NEW YORK, NY. The Pace Gallery presents Untitled (Mylar), 2011, a sprawling single large-scale installation on view for the first time at 545 West 22nd Street from March 4 through April 9, 2011.

In Donovan’s new installation, sheets of Mylar grow into towering organic structures of varying heights rising up to approximately 11 feet tall. As with the artist’s pin drawings on view at 510 West 25th Street, light plays a pivotal role in the work as it catches the folds of Mylar and radiates off its undulating metallic surfaces. The installation relates to Untitled (Mylar), 2010, recently acquired by the Indianapolis Museum of Art for their permanent collection, and is the first of its kind to be shown in New York City. Tara Donovan: Untitled (Mylar), 2011 marks the first major solo-exhibition devoted to Donovan’s large-scale installation or sculptural work in New York City since Donovan at the Met at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in November of 2007, which was extended for nearly a full year by popular demand. The museum show was the fourth in a series dedicated to solo exhibitions of contemporary artists.

From March 16 through June 6, 2011, Donovan will headline Artist File 2011: The NACT Annual Show of Contemporary Art at the National Arts Center Tokyo with two large-scale installations. The group exhibition will be the artist’s first show in Japan.

Tara Donovan (b. 1969, Flushing, New York) received the prestigious MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Award in 2008. The artist holds a B.F.A. from the Corcoran College of Art and Design, Washington, D.C. (1991) and an M.F.A. in sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond (1999). The exhibitions at The Pace Gallery follow a three year travelling retrospective devoted to the artist, organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston 2008–2009, which traveled to the Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, Cincinnati; Des Moines Art Center; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego through 2010. The retrospective was accompanied by the first monograph on the artist, which was published by The Monacelli Press.

Tara Donovan’s work is held in numerous important public and private collections, including Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Brooklyn Museum of Art; Dallas Museum of Art; Indianapolis Museum of Art; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Milwaukee Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; St. Louis Art Museum; Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.

Tara Donovan lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She has been represented by The Pace Gallery since 2005.

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I love this, on the desk at the Pace Gallery: LOVE ART & HELP JAPAN