The architect Louis Kahn was famous for asking "What does a brick want to be?" Tara Donovan asks the same question about plastic soda straws, Styrofoam cups, and Scotch tape. For each of her ingenious works, the New York-based artist takes a quantity of some ordinary thing, thinks about it hard, then does something to it that brings it into a realm of beauty and paradox you would never have dreamed it could get to. Any one of her pieces could be understood as both a rigorous work of art and a summer camp crafts project launched into the stratosphere.
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (10/10 – 1/4/09)