Completed in 1972, the innovative 48-story building known as the Transamerica Pyramid Center quickly became an indelible icon of the San Francisco skyline. Its modernist features include blocky elements, uniform rows of windows, and it’s namesake pyramidical shape, but its design also took its surroundings into consideration, as its tapered shape meant that more sunlight could reach the ground level around it.
Inside, the light-filled Annex Gallery is currently home to the similarly towering works of Tara Donovan’s Stratagems series. Made from thousands of recycled CDs that are wrapped around steel supports and placed on concrete plinths, these swirling, reflective spires directly reference skyscraper architecture. “I am always fixated on the ways that sculptures transform space and experience, and in this context, an intention of these sculptures to engage the understanding of urban architecture can be fully realized,” Donovan says.
Donovan is known for her large-scale sculptures that assume architectonic or geologic forms using huge quantities of everyday materials such as buttons, plastic cups, straws, or tar paper. Assembled or stacked into freestanding sculptures and broad installations covering entire walls or floors, she transforms uniform, mundane items into ethereal interactions of light, texture, scale, and space.
Donovan’s Stratgems pieces are also an elegant examination of the evolution of technology. CDs emerged as a dominant commercial medium for music in the 1990s but were eventually usurped by digital formats like the MP3, then streaming services. Placed within the context of the modernist Transamerica Pyramid Center—an iconic structure that is nevertheless a product of the past—we’re prompted to consider how our attitudes and values evolve over time.
The skyscraper is positioned as a collaborator in Donovan’s exhibition, which is presented by the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco (ICA SF). The show marks an initiative by the museum to nomadically exhibit in different places in order to increase access, situate pieces in unique contexts, and bring artists directly into dialogue with the city.
Stratagems remains on view through July 31.
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