Tara Donovan transforms ordinary, mass-produced materials—paper plates, plastic cups, pencils, buttons, and pins—into immersive, large-scale sculptures and site-specific installations of striking delicacy. By exploiting the inherent properties of her materials—the translucency of Scotch tape or the springy malleability of a Slinky—she constructs works that oscillate between the synthetic and the organic, evoking cloud formations, cave interiors, molecular networks, and other natural phenomena.Her disciplined use of single materials and rule-based processes aligns her practice with the conceptual rigor of Sol LeWitt and the material experimentation of Eva Hesse, while remaining distinctly her own in scale and sensibility. Donovan earned her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1999, the same year she debuted her first institutional exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.Since then, her work has been featured in major solo exhibitions at institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. Widely acclaimed, her sculptures have also achieved strong results on the secondary market, often reaching six-figure prices. In recognition of her innovative practice, Donovan was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2008.

Tara Donovan

American

Main

Artist

Printer

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Untitled (Slinky)