8 February 2026

The ICA San Francisco project at the Transamerica Pyramid Center stays open to the public through July 31

The Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco (ICA SF) has inaugurated its newly reimagined programme with “Stratagems,” a large-scale installation by American sculptor Tara Donovan, now on view at the Transamerica Pyramid Center.

The exhibition marks a key moment in the institution’s shift toward a nomadic, site-responsive model, activating architecturally significant locations across the city rather than maintaining a permanent home.

Installed inside the glass-walled Annex at 600 Montgomery Street, the presentation features monumental vertical sculptures constructed from thousands of recycled CDs. The reflective surfaces refract daylight and subtly shift with changing light conditions, transforming the space into a prism-like environment that evolves throughout the day and across the seasons.

Organised in partnership with the Transamerica Pyramid Center and aligned with the third edition of San Francisco Art Week, the exhibition includes several works that have never previously been shown publicly, positioning Donovan’s practice within a dynamic architectural dialogue with the iconic building.

Donovan, born in New York in 1969, is widely recognised for her large-scale sculptures and installations built from everyday, mass-produced materials—plastic cups, rubber bands, paper plates, tape and more—assembled through systems of repetition and aggregation. These processes transform ordinary objects into immersive, often organic-looking forms that foreground perception, materiality and spatial experience.

Her work has frequently been situated within the lineage of postminimalism and process art, as well as Light and Space practices, reflecting a long-standing interest in how structure, accumulation and environmental conditions can reshape viewers’ understanding of both material and scale.

“Stratagems” extends this trajectory. By repurposing obsolete optical media, Donovan foregrounds the afterlife of technological objects and their capacity for visual transformation. The sculptures’ shimmering surfaces act simultaneously as architectural interventions and perceptual experiments, producing atmospheric effects that blur the boundaries between sculpture, installation and environment.

“Stratagems” opened on January 17 and will remain on view at the Transamerica Pyramid Center through July 31.