Tara Donovan’s Amazing Sculptures at Pace in Chelsea: Extended through August 23rd!

Tara Donovan's index card sculptures standing in a group together looking like stalagmites in a cave

Long-time Glenwood favorite Tara Donovan has two of her large-scale, as-usual fantastic sculptures currently on view at Pace in Chelsea, and they've proven to be such crowd-pleasers that the gallery has extended the exhibition through August 23rd! This summer has been so packed with fun things to see and do around town I only made it over to Pace late last week, but I'm really glad I didn't miss these two beauties. Donovan created using her signature method of taking a mundane, factory-made object–in this case, index cards for one piece, and acrylic rods for the other–and assembling millions of them to create something bio-organic-looking, and wonderful.

A close up image of the index card sculptures, where you can see how each card was stacked individually to create the sculpture.

Index Card Sculptures Resemble Something From Nature

In the front room is Donovan's index card piece, for which the artist has glued together an almost inconceivable number of ordinary, 3" x 5" cards to build what feels like something from the natural world: a coral reef, perhaps, or stalagmites in a cave. Even when you look in close, and can see the actual individual cards, it's still hard to shake the feeling that it is anything but a natural structure. The amount of discipline, and patience, and commitment to process required of Donovan to create something like this is extraordinary.

A man walking between two of Tara Donovan's index card sculptures.

Acrylic Rods or Fuzzy, Exploding Galaxy?

The piece in Pace's back room might be even more a stunner! Here Donovan uses acrylic rods–thousands upon thousands of them–and, through sheer aggregation and accumulation, transforms them into what could be a giant puffy seed, or an exploding galaxy, or maybe a soft, fuzzy animal. As always with Donovan's works, your eye and mind jump between registering the single, individual parts, and reconciling how they could be made to look like the glorious whole. Just remarkable.

Image of Tara Donovan's sculpture create out of acrylic rods, which makes it look like a fuzzy balls or an exploding galaxy.

More Information: Tara Donovan's Sculptures at Pace

Tara Donovan's exhibition at Pace has just been extended to run through August 23rd. The gallery is located at 534 West 25th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues, and is one of three Paces on the block (it's the one closest to 11th). Pace is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.  

Close up photo of the acrylic rods used to create Tara Donovan's sculpture at Pace Gallery  

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