Tara Donovan’s sculptures look like they may have been built by an insect colony with a hive mind. One can imagine thousands of tiny creatures each carrying index cards or acrylic threads, dropping them to form a sculpture growing from a gallery floor. That is to say, Donovan’s work process is highly repetitious, stacking, gluing and sculpting mundane materials until they begin to take on new, organic forms. Several of the artist’s latest large-scale sculptures are currently on display in a dual exhibition at Pace Gallery’s Menlo Park, CA and New York City art spaces.
At the New York location, a fluffy-looking sculpture made of rabbit tail-like balls of acrylic dominates the space, neighboring stalagmite-like piles of neatly shaped index cards. The Menlo Park exhibition, which serves more as a retrospective, has an equally large sculpture: a molecule-like formation of black spheres that seem to have a luminosity despite being monochromatic. The piece is accompanied by smaller works, such as a flat, puddle-like sculpture made from pencils cut to different heights. Tara Donovan’s exhibition at Pace Gallery in Menlo Park is on view through June 30 and her New York show runs through August 15. Take a look at some of the sculptures below.
Untitled, 2014. 10′ 1/2″ x 14′ 2″ x 12′ 10-3/4″. New York City.
Untitled, 2014. Styrene index cards, metal, wood, paint and glue, 12′ 5-1/2″ x 22′ 4″ x 22′ 11-1/2″ at Pace Gallery NYC.
Untitled at Pace Gallery NYC.
Installation view at Menlo Park.
Installation view at Menlo Park.
Combining his own creativity and digital techniques, Dutch artist 
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Inside her workshop, Sabrina Gruss re-animates found natural materials and animal remains into eerie sculptures. The artist has said she's inspired by her own family's history and a multi-faceted view of death in her works. In terms of inspiration within fine art, she cites outsider and fringe art, as well as Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon.