Taking advantage of the lovely weather in New York– and trying not to think about how long it would or wouldn’t last– our office ventured outside and took a field trip to the gallery-thick neighborhood of Chelsea. We lingered for a long while at Tara Donovan, who is showing in two of the Pace Gallery spaces. The first stop brought us into a large installation, Untitled (Mylar), 2011 , a shimmering coal colored assemblage of spheres that are reminiscent at once of disco balls, molecular structures, and a billowing smoke cloud. The spheres were made of curving tubes of thin metallic sheets of Mylar. The effect of light bouncing off of the reflective surfaces of the folds created variations of color and shadow, shiny and matte. The whole composition seemed to have built itself in every direction like coral, multiplying from the inside out.

Curious about what the accompanying show Drawings (Pins), 2010, would have waiting for us, we headed a few blocks north, where the white walls were hung with what seemed to be canvases of monochromatic compositions. Considering the name of the show, the works might have been large-scale re-imagining of day-dreamy pencil drawings, experiments in gradation and interlocking circles made with a compass. Upon closer viewing, however, the works revealed themselves as more sculpture than flat canvases: thousands of steel pins had been pressed into a backing board. The designs were created by varying the density of the pins to allow more or less of the white background to show through. The result were patterns and gradations of color with incredible depth and dimension. Like the larger installation, the play of light and shadow on simple forms was fascinating.

-EM