by Richard Gleaves

Tara Donovan at MCASD is a perfect cognitive storm of work, site, and placement.

Of the many fascinating aspects of Donovan's work, perhaps most intriguing is the oblique relation between how it's promoted as visit-worthy, and how it works as art.

The hook is the novelty of a mass accumulation of everyday objects, while the actual esthetic engine is the work's deft exploitation of a bi-level figure/ground inversion:

• At the micro level the action centers on the play of light between or through the objects, rather than on the objects themselves.
  
• At the macro level the focus on large-scale bioform enables the work to engage (and thus appropriate) the rectilinearity of the containing museum spaces.
  

These levels are linked by the work's crucial dependency on formal properties of surface:

• Maximal scale/mass ratio (structural)
  
• Maximal permeability of light (visual)
  

Wallpaper, carpet ... but unlike any ever seen.