The Beguiling Desolations Of Trisha Donnelly

at Matthew Marks Gallery, NYC
by Brian Block

In this era of pervasive promotional storytelling, Trisha Donnelly consistently chooses to go the other way and expunge. Her works carry no titles, her exhibitions no names, and her press releases only a few facts. This calculated act of liberalizing the viewing field works to intensify the abstracting power of the white cube toward the discrete objects and artist’s interventions on view. Indeed, what remains most compelling about Donnelly’s practice is her expert crafting of distinctive analogue mise en scène that finely reframes the show’s perceptual field. Far more gripping than any particular artwork of hers, it is this clandestine manipulation of the gallery space itself — as if it were a fabric in her medium — that she wields to captivating and occasionally frustrating effect.

Ten stone sculptures make up the bulk of the artworks on view at Donnelly’s most recent exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery’s two Chelsea spaces. There are also three projected digital images of her familiar piston-in-liquid motifs and one small print. The stones are long rectangular slabs either laid down as plinths or made to stand totem-like — reminiscent of historical memorials, of property markers, and pointedly of the white cube’s own kinship with archaic sacred architecture and spaces of…