Tara Donovan | Screen Drawings

made with aluminum insect screen. For these works, which Donovan began creating during the pandemic, she moves, pinches, and cuts the wires of aluminum screen to extract mesmeric patterns from the material’s existing grids. Ranging from just over a foot in height and width to nearly four feet wide and tall, these two-dimensional screen drawings feature unique geometric motifs that produce varied visual effects.

Donovan’s screen drawings reflect her longstanding investigations into the possibilities—and limits—of human perception. The artist’s practice, which spans sculpture, installation, drawing, and printmaking, centers on transformations of familiar, everyday objects into talismanic, shapeshifting works of art that fully reveal themselves to viewers during in-person encounters. Requiring sustained contemplation on the part of the viewer, Donovan’s screen drawings change when experienced from different vantage points. With this body of work, the artist brings viewers into a suspended, meditative state, encouraging them to look closely to delve into the screens’ subtleties, nuances, and multitudes.

In creating her screen drawings, Donovan uses a mathematical methodology to draw out the phenomenological and illusionistic properties of the material. While some patterns seem to be rendered in relief, others appear to emerge from the depths of the grids. The intricate, layered appearances of Donovan’s patterns belie the artist’s use of one singular piece of screen for each of these works. Interstitial spaces between the lines in her compositions buzz with energy and activity, and all the screen drawings in the artist’s forthcoming exhibition are united by a sense of constant motion. Many also possess a distinctly digital quality that contributes to their aliveness.

This body of work can be understood as an extension of Donovan’s gridded relief prints, which she showed in her solo exhibition with Pace in New York in 2021. Donovan’s screen drawings indulge in the variable possibilities that exist within a defined system. In her work across mediums, the artist obscures and breaks down her chosen material—from readymade screens to paper plates and buttons—without obliterating its fundamental essence.