Artist Tara Donovan @ Pace Gallery NYC - "Stratagems" Exhibition - Group of sculptures made of found CD-ROM discs

Tara Donovan: Stratagems

Pace Gallery, New York

May 3 – June 15, 2024

Tara Donovan 

Stratagem I, 2024 

© Tara Donovan, courtesy Pace Gallery

Pace presents an exhibition of new work by Tara Donovan at its 540 West 25th Street gallery in New York. The show, titled Stratagems, spotlights a group of sculptures made entirely of found, scavenged, and upcycled CD-ROM discs. Coinciding with Frieze New York, the artist’s presentation at the gallery is complemented by a Pace Live performance from choreographer Kim Brandt.

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

Marking her eleventh solo show with Pace, Stratagems is the first exhibition dedicated to Tara Donovan’s three- dimensional sculptures mounted in New York since 2021. Comprising 11 new sculptures, the show will be presented on the gallery’s seventh floor, which features floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Chelsea skyline. Built atop concrete pedestals, each of Donovan’s vertically-oriented sculptures is composed of stacks of CDs, varying in height from seven to ten feet tall. Breathing new life into the banal and outmoded medium of the compact disc, these works will be activated by the natural light that floods the gallery space. Depending on the time of day and the viewer’s perspective, a range of optical effects unfold across the refractive surfaces of the works. Mutable and seemingly alive, Tara 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 the same time, these works invite the viewer to contemplate the transformation of an obsolete medium—once used for the 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 amid Tara Donovan’s exhibition at Pace. Presented by Pace Live—the gallery’s interdisciplinary platform for live art performances, musical acts, conversations, and other events—Kim Brandt’s performance will share certain affinities with Tara Donovan’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. Kim Brandt, who has previously presented her work at MoMA PS1 and SculptureCenter in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and many other institutions, has developed a practice that investigates the body as a dynamic material constantly negotiating context-specific relationships to time and space. Further details about her performance at the gallery will be announced in due course.

Stratagems will open during the final days of When Forms Come Alive, a group show at the Hayward Gallery in London featuring Tara Donovan’s work, on view through May 6.

For over 20 years, TARA DONOVAN (b. 1969, Flushing, New York) has created large-scale installations, sculptures and drawings that utilize everyday objects to explore the transformative effects of accumulation and aggregation. Known for her commitment to process, she has earned acclaim for her ability to exploit the inherent physical characteristics of an object in order to transform it into works that generate unique perceptual phenomena and atmospheric effects. Tara Donovan’s many accolades include the prestigious MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Award (2008); and the first annual Calder Prize (2005), among others. For over a decade, numerous museums have mounted solo exhibitions of Tara Donovan’s work including the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (2004 and 2009); Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri (2006); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2007-08); Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2008); Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana (2010); the Milwaukee Art Museum, Illinois (2012); Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (2013), Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, Remagen, Germany (2014); Parrish Museum, Watermill, New York (2015); Jupiter Artland, Edinburgh, Scotland (2015); Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Colorado (2018); and the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Illinois (2019). Her work is held in the collections of major institutions such as the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. Pace Gallery has represented Tara Donovan since 2005. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

PACE GALLERY NEW YORK

540 West 25th Street, New York City

www.pacegallery.com

Nick Cave, FWM Philadelphia: Recents Soundsuits installation and video

Nick Cave: Let's C 

The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA

Through Mid-February, 2012

“There is a transformative moment, when [the wearer has] to be able to make the shift. Since it’s so dominating, this form, you are no longer who you are. So who have you become and what is that? How do you bring conviction to that? What are you willing to give up to move into this other being?” — Nick Cave

Nick Cave: Let’s C is an exhibit of Chicago-based artist Nick Cave's iconic Soundsuits, new installation created at the Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM), and video. As a current FWM artist-in-residence, Cave worked in collaboration with FWM studio staff and apprentices to debut Architectural Forest (2011), an ambitious, floor-to-ceiling installation of ornamented bamboo that also serves as a mystical setting, in which Cave’s December 16th performance at FWM taken place. Footage of this multisensory performance—which incorporates dance, music, and ambient sounds from the installation itself—is on view during the exhibition run.

NICK CAVE, Speak Louder, 2011 

Buttons, wire, bugle beads, upholstery, and mannequin, 98 X 68 1/2 X 54 inches (installed). 

Photo by James  Prinz, Chicago, courtesy of Nick Cave and the Jack Shainman Gallery, NY

For over two decades, Nick Cave has constructed Soundsuits out of a litany of unique, found materials, such as throw rugs, stuffed animals, gleaming buttons, human hair, and other items from thrift stores, flea markets, and estate sales. The Soundsuits’ sculptural form functions simultaneously to display and conceal the body through the visual references to the exuberance of masquerade and the protection of armor. Let’s C includes recent Soundsuits that showcase a new direction in Cave’s practice, introducing a muted palette, uniform surfaces, and dynamic relationships between multiple figures. Also on view is Drive-By (2011), a video of Soundsuits in motion.

In addition to his exhibition, Nick Cave designed the Museum’s street-level façade, which features a reflective, doily-inspired pattern adhered to the window surface.

NICK CAVE (b. 1959, Missouri) received an MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield, MI (1989) and a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute, MO (1982). In Fall 2011, Cave had two concurrent solo exhibitions in New York, NY at Jack Shainman Gallery and Mary Boone Gallery. Cave was also included in group exhibitions this past Fall, such as 30 Americans: Rubell Family Collection, at the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington, DC, and the Prospect.2 Biennial, taking place throughout New Orleans, LA.  His solo traveling exhibition, Meet Me at the Center of the Earth—organized by the Yerba Buena Art Center, San Francisco, CA—will be on view at the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, VA through January 2012. Nick Cave has a forthcoming major presentation of his work scheduled for the Tri Postal in Lille, France, in late 2012. His work is held in the following distinctive public collections: the Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY; Crystal Bridges, Bentonville, AR; the Detroit Institute of Arts, MI; the High Museum, Atlanta, GA; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; and the Seattle Art Museum, WA; among others. Cave has received several prestigious awards including: the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2008), Artadia Award (2006), the Joyce Award (2006), Creative Capital Grants (2002, 2004, and 2005), and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2001). Cave lives and works in Chicago, IL where he serves as Professor and Chairman of the Fashion Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Also on View at The Fabric Workshop and Museum at The New Temporary Contemporary, 1222 Arch

Fighting Kissing Dancing

The Fabric Workshop and Museum, in an exchange with the de la Cruz Collection Contemporary Art Space, Miami, featuring video works by Miami and New York based artists.

FWM - Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA 19107, USA

www.fabricworkshopandmuseum.org

Live art sound performances at Raven Row, London, June-July 2011

Gone with the Wind 

Live Art Sound Performances 

Raven Row, London 

June & July 2011 

Photo of ESTHER FERRER - Unesco Paris - CourtesyRaven Row, London 

In conjunction with the sound art exhibition Gone with the Wind, Raven Row presents a programme of seven sound based performances through June and July 2011. Including established artists such as Esther Ferrer, the programme will also comprise presentations from the burgeoning experimental music and sound art scene selected by Ed Baxter, exhibition curator and director of art radio station Resonance104.4fm. 

Esther Ferrer 

Saturday 25 June, 7pm

Artist Esther Ferrer (b. 1937, Spain), is best known for her radical performances, her principal form of artistic expression since 1965, both as a soloist and as a member of pioneering experimental music and performance art group ZAJ (1959-93). Alongside composers Juan Hidalgo and Walter Marchetti, Ferrer participated in the group's ‘visible music’ actions and extended concerts. Known as a proponent of free expression, confrontation, feminism and authentic experience, Ferrer will present an entirely new performance piece in Raven Row’s gallery space.

Saturday 2 July, 2pm

The Bonham Brothers are two London based brothers and noise musicians known for making music by playing bric-a-brac as instruments. A burnt tape machine found during the recent restoration of Raven Row has been made into a sculpture by artist Richard Crow for the Resonance Open. Crow and the Bonham Brothers will resurrect the destroyed machine as an instrument for this performance. 

Thursday 7 July, 7pm

The Resonance Radio Orchestra will perform the newly composed Lascia o raddoppia? [Double or quits?], a radiophonic reconstruction of the 1950s Italian television quiz show of the same name. One of the winners of this hugely popular show was Walter Marchetti, an artist in the current exhibition Gone with the Wind, who as a teenager answered questions on contemporary music. Another contestant was quintessential avant-garde composer John Cage, answering questions about his specialist subject of mushrooms.

Saturday 9 July, 2pm

Alongside a sixteen strong choir, Israeli singer and experimental musician Sharon Gal will perform The Long Drone. Acoustic instruments and multiple voices will ‘drone’ for two hours in a style pitched somewhere between natural soundscapes, La Monte Young's The Theatre of Eternal Music and The Scratch Orchestra.

Sunday 10 July, 2pm

Sound artists and theorists Lucia Farinati and Brandon LaBelle will discuss the newly published Site of Sound, a book that considers radio as a sonic architecture. Sound researcher Ian Rawes will join them to introduce a discussion about field recording and phonography.

Saturday 16 July, 2pm

British artist Christopher Weaver will perform Variations for a Room and a Tone, an installation that will make audible the resonant frequencies of Raven Row to produce music. Weaver will be joined by the members of the electro-acoustic quartet Oscillatorial Binnage.

Sunday 17 July, 2pm

Radio artists Sarah Washington and Knut Aufermann form the Anglo-German duo Tonic Train who will give a performance combining radio feedback and wine. Having recently moved to the Mosel region of Germany, in the heart of the country's wine growing area, Tonic Train will combine their new found passion for vinification with a lifelong saturation in avant-garde sonic arts.

All events are free and places will be allocated on a first come first served basis. Reservation needed for Esther Ferrer event.

RAVEN ROW, LONDON, UK

www.ravenrow.org