Tara Donovan

 Haze, 2003 

Stacked Clear Plastic Drinking Straws 

12' 7"(H) x 42' 2"(W) 7 3_4"(D) 

Ace Gallery New York

 Lure, 2004 

Fishing Line

2 1_2"(H) x 10'6"(W) x 26'(D) 

UCLA Hammer Museum

 Moire, 1999 

Adding Machine Paper 

2' 8"(H) x 29'(W) x 24' 6 1_2"(D) 

Ace Gallery Los Angeles, 2005

Bluffs, 2005 

Buttons, Glue 

3 1_2'(H) x 5'(W) x 12'(D)

Ace Gallery Los Angeles

Tara Donovan | The Pace Gallery, February 12th - March 19th 2011

 A detail of one of her works made entirely from dressmaker pins.

 The artist Tara Donovan, and family, with one of her new mylar works.

Donovan in front of a work from her latest series “Drawings (Pins),” currently up at Pace Gallery.

In the art world, Tara Donovan has become the belle of the banal. She employs everyday objects such as drinking straws, buttons or No. 2 pencils to create large-scale sculptures and prints that take on a life (and light) of their own. She allows the shape of the chosen material to determine the form of the piece until it becomes magically other (think vast moonscape in Styrofoam cups), managing to transcend both materiality and gimmickry in a culture that celebrates both.

 

In her latest series, ‘‘Drawings (Pins),’’ on view this month at the Pace Gallery in Chelsea, shimmering metallic ‘‘canvases’’ are composed of dressmaker pins — tens of thousands of them. The cumulative effect is almost painterly. While these works are two-dimensional, they deal with the same issues as her ‘‘site-responsive’’ sculptures, as she calls them: ‘‘It’s all about perceiving this material from a distance and close up and how the light interacts with it,’’ Donovan recently explained, citing how Scotch tape, stuck to itself in biomorphic swirls, takes on a ‘‘fugitive color’’ when hit by the sun. ‘‘I’m constantly looking for this kind of phenomenological experience.’’

Picasso: Guitars 1912 - 1914

Pablo Picasso. Still life with Guitar. 

Variant state. Paris, assembled before November 15, 1913. Subsequently preserved by the artist. 

Paperboard, paper, string, and painted wire installed with cut cardboard box

Overall: 30 x 20 1/2 x 7 3/4" (76.2 x 52.1 x 19.7cm). 

The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Gift of the artist

Sometime between October and December 1912, Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) made a guitar. Cobbled together from cardboard, paper, string, and wire, materials that he cut, folded, threaded, and glued, Picasso’s silent instrument resembled no sculpture ever seen before. In 1914 the artist reiterated his fragile papery construction in a more fixed and durable sheet metal form. These two Guitars, both gifts from the artist to MoMA, bracket an incandescent period of material and structural experimentation in Picasso’s work. Picasso: Guitars 1912–1914 explores this breakthrough moment in 20th-century art, and the Guitars’ place within it. Bringing together some 70 closely connected collages, constructions, drawings, mixed-media paintings, and photographs assembled from over 30 public and private collections worldwide, this exhibition offers fresh insight into Picasso’s cross-disciplinary process in the years immediately preceding World War I.

Picasso: Guitars 1912-1914 is on view from February 13th to June 6 at the Museum of Modern Art;  moma.org.

When Picasso Changed his Tune New York Times Review

Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band | Ice Cream for Crow

Jean Prouvé | Gagosian, Paris

 
Jean Prouvé (1901-1984) is widely acknowledged as one of the twentieth century’s most important and influential designers whose wide-ranging oeuvre combined bold elegance with economy of means and strong social conscience. Working as a craftsman, designer, manufacturer, architect, teacher, and engineer, his career spanned more than sixty years, during which time he produced prefabricated houses, building components and façades, as well as furniture for the home, office and school. The exhibition focuses primarily on Prouvé’s prefabricated structures of the late 1940s and includes maquettes, plans, and architectural sections of them, and films. It attests to the pivotal role that Prouvé played in the development of cutting-edge technology and modular systems for mass production in the post-war modernist period.

Actors Acting | Vincent Cassel

Alison Rossiter | Yossi Milo, New York

Fuji, exact expiration date unknown, ca.1930's, processed in 2010

Gelatin Silver Print, Diptyc

Fuji, exact expiration date unknown, ca.1930's, processed in 2010

Gelatin Silver Print, Diptyc

Eastman Kodak Royal Bromide, expired March 1919. processed in 2010

Gelatin Silver Print

Barnet Bar-Gas, Exact expiration date unknown, ca. 1925 processed in 2007
Fingerprint found fr, Gelatin Silver Print, Smaller than 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches

 Ansco Cyko, Expires Dec 1, 1917, processed in 2007
Gelatin Silver Print, 6 x 4 inches

Alison Rossiter | Reduction
September 23rd - October 30th 2010
Alison Rossiter’s photographs are created without a camera on expired, vintage photo paper. The artist experiments with gelatin silver papers she collects from throughout the 20th century, making controlled marks by pouring or pooling photographic developer directly onto the surface of the paper. Dark forms emerge which often resemble mountainous landscapes or active tornados; other shapes are paired by the artist to create minimalist diptychs.

Each batch of gelatin silver paper, such as Eastman Royal Bromide, which expired in 1919, or Nepera- Velox, which expired in 1906, possesses unique qualities, depending on its particular color, surface, condition and age. Utilizing her experience in conserving photographs, Ms. Rossiter reacts to these variables and manipulates the interaction of paper and developer by hand, paying tribute to the intrinsic qualities of photographic materials and reintroducing unpredictability into a process which is now commonly digitized.

http://www.alisonrossiter.com

Taryn Simon | TED

The Death of a Building | Christoph Gielen

Urban Scotland, 2003

Christoph Gielen in the New York Times

Most of my work as a photographer centers on urban development in the sense of construction and expansion. But not all development succeeds, and not all construction lasts. In recent years a number of cities in Britain have recognized that some of the large public housing projects built during the postwar era have been failures; what were supposed to be new residential communities have been overtaken by crime and drug use. In several cases, particularly unmanageable buildings have even been torn down.

New York, N.Y. (1986) | Raymond Depardon

Incognito | Yancey Richardson

 

 Mitch Epstein, "Untitled, NY, 1996"

24" x 30" Chromogenic Print, Edition of 15

Stephen Shore, "Room 125, Westbank Motel, Idaho Falls, Idaho, July 18, 1973"

20" x 24" C-print, Edition of 8

Matthew Pillsbury, "Matthew Pillsbury, Alias, 9-10 pm, 2010"

13" x 19" Pigment ink print, Edition of 20

 Francesca Woodman, "P.059 Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976"

(printed 2002-04), 8" x 10" Gelatin Silver Print, Edition of 40

 Ray Metzker, "Philadelphia, 1964"

8" x 10" Gelatin silver print, Edition of 20

 Lisa Kereszi, "Thrilling, Neon Sign, Niagara Falls, Canada, 2005"

30" x 40" Chromogenic Print, Edition of 5
 

 Gail Albert Halaban, "Out My Window, Chelsea, Flower Block from the series 
Out My Window, NYC, 2009", 20" x 24" Archival Pigment Print, Edition of 10

“Incognito,” the current show at Yancey Richardson, explores the ways that photographers can weave their own presence into their work. Many of the photos serve as clandestine self-portraits: traces of the artists appear as shadows, reflections, and body parts, clues embedded within each photographer’s game of hide-and-seek with the camera.

from Photo Booth