Did you like blowing bubbles as a child? Just by waving a soapy wand through the air one could create fragile orbs gleaming with iridescent rainbows. A soap bubble floating through the air is ethereal and fascinating. Several artworks by the artist Tara Donovan give a viewer the same type of sensation. Imagine peering out a window through a tangle of reflective Mylar® and seeing a kaleidoscopic spectrum of colors caused by random street traffic being mirrored off the plastic sheeting. That and other similar mesmerizing works fill a new solo exhibition of artworks by the 2008 recipient of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship—the “genius” grant.

Tara Donovan’s exhibition features several large room-sized sculptures, installations, and reliefs that are made from such material as many thousands of disposable drinking cups, millions of clear plastic drinking straws, or numerous yards of 3M™ adhesive tape. Co-curated by Nicholas Baume and Jen Mergel, the traveling exhibit entitled Tara Donovan originated at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston and is now on display at the downtown venue of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.

From afar, a huge lumpy, white relief entitled “Haze” looks like milk curd on steroids that’s been smeared all over a huge wall. From closer up, Ms. Donovan’s relief reveals that it is actually more than one million translucent drinking straws stacked perpendicularly against a wall at slightly irregular lengths. As one walks to and fro before the relief, an effervescent apparition appears. When one’s eye is directly in front of certain clusters of drinking straws, an irregular shaped vibrating illusion becomes visible. The transitory phenomenon is created as one momentarily views directly into individual interiors of the tubular straws, a view that changes as one moves about the gallery. The viewing experience is both peculiar and compelling. Due to the physics of the artwork’s optical effect, people of different heights will never have the identical visual experience.

A large quantity of an everyday material has been exploited in Donovan’s installation “Nebulous.” One might perceive a low snow-covered island; but the 20- by 15-foot island is actually yards and yards of intricately snaking and stuck together Scotch® Tape standing on edge. The artist even manages to evoke differing hues, akin to ice versus snow, by utilizing the refractive qualities of the “Magic Transparent” versus the “Invisible” types of the ½ inch wide tape. Just be careful if you go to see it because the jagged island of adhesive tape rests directly on the gallery’s ocean-like cement floor.

This exhibition is really a must-see as Donovan entertains museum visitors with artworks that look like a churning brown sea made from tons of layered roofing paper, like reflective fungal outcroppings made of Mylar®, or like enormous lily pads made from loosely coiled adding machine tape. Like cotton candy, the exhibition is easily consumed because each artwork is an entertaining spectacle; but do these spectacles speak to more than their theatrical effects?

The curators make much effort to link the work in this exhibit to the Minimalist artist Carl Andre and Process Art artist Eva Hesse to substantiate Donovan’s authority. Is it because her works are too attention grabbing? Donovan’s work is quite different from Andre’s cold subset piles of infinite bricks or Hesse’s phallus-threatening box and erotic latex skins. Indeed, her work is more analogous to P.T. Barnum’s more likable curiosity, Jumbo the elephant--or perhaps Walt Disney's flying Dumbo. This compulsion to weigh down Donovan’s buoyant work with brick laden gravitas seems unnecessary. Carl Andre needed the museum system and the Tate Gallery to tell the world that his bricks were indeed serious art. With overkill, the curators do the same thing with Donovan in the exhibition’s catalogue.

Tara Donovan’s sculptures also hark back to the Op Art artists of the early 1960s, like Bridget Riley, who were dogged with criticisms of their paintings as being little more than attention-grabbing optical effects. When gazing at Donovan’s works, one might consider leveling similar charges against them; but after 40-years, Riley’s paintings still captivate.

Only history will decide if Donovan has eternal longevity, so go see her work for yourself and play a part in how Donovan will be remembered in posterity.