Today Jess, Yang, and I went to the ICA to see Tara Donovan’s solo show. I’m glad we went.

How to describe her work? First I would like to say that I am not going to post a link to anything about her on the web, because accompanying it will surely be images, and those images will not at all testify justly to the actual impact of which her work is capable in personal encounter. In other words, they will make her work look like dismissible and utterly unremarkable formalist whimsies. This could not be farther from the truth. Though her work contains a sly whisper of whimsy, and they are primarily about formal systems, they are by no means unremarkable.

The closest I could come to describing how I felt as I walked through the galleries exhibiting her work was this: It was like taking a walk through a surreal and fantastic alien garden.

Her work is fairly straightforward in concept, actually. Take the quotidian tidbits of mass production—Scotch tape, toothpicks, styrofoam cups, Mylar sheeting—and transform them into visually complex and semi-magical forms bereft of any feel of the everyday—forms that seem to pulsate quietly with organic life. Lots of artists have explored this idea. But she does it so intensely. Her works are impressive in both scale – you cannot guess how many drinking straws or cups she uses in a particular work because the numbers almost feel like they would be on a geological scale – and technical execution. For instance, she assembled the three opening pieces, Untitled (Pins), Untitled (Toothpicks), and Untitled (Glass) without the help of adhesive, apparently. One can imagine that they are held together with her sheer willpower. Because she damn well said so. That’s scary hardcore.

I think my favorite work out of the entire show was Untitled (Mylar), which consisted of these various-sized semicircular orbs reminiscent of colored foil Christmas ornaments. These “orbs” appeared to be growing out of the gallery floor and out of each other. This was the part that suddenly made me realize that this gallery had been transformed into a garden. To me, the best part about this piece was their otherworldliness. They seemed to hover mysteriously between the realms of mineral and creature. They reminded me both of rock formations and of lichen or mold growth. I’m suddenly reminded of a music video I really liked in high school. It was like being in that world.

Often for me, the litmus test of what makes good art is how the general public, not just the art folks, respond to it. Judging from just today, this show apparently was very well received. Today the gallery was very crowded, and lots of children with their parents were there. All the gallery pamphlets had been taken. People oohed over the mind-blowing scale and at least one little kid got down on their elbows and stared, transfixed, with nose inches away from the works, as if examining a fantastic bug they found in their backyards. More than once I heard people say stuff like:

“Those are straws!”

“Holy shit!”

It was that kind of amazing. And I am blown away once again, despite all my layers of art-school-induced cynicism, by how wonderful art can be. You should all go see it, if you can.