Practical Effects

Since emerging in the early 1990s, Los Angeles–based artist Diana Thater (b. 1962) has pioneered the use of film, video, light, and sound, continually challenging the boundaries of time-based media and installation art. Her work explores the relationship between the natural and man-made worlds while critically examining the structures of mediated reality. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, including literature, animal behavior sciences, mathematics, chess, and sociology, her evocative works directly engage their surroundings, producing an intricate relationship between time and space.

Born in San Francisco, Thater studied Art History at New York University, before receiving her MFA from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

The artist’s work has been represented by David Zwirner since 1993. A solo exhibition of Thater's work, Practical Effects, was on view at the gallery’s New York location in 2022. Yes, there will be singing was a sound, video, and light piece which could be experienced digitally via David Zwirner Offsite in 2020. In 2015, Science, Fiction marked Thater’s eighth solo exhibition with the gallery in New York. Previous solo presentations of the artist’s work at David Zwirner, New York, include Chernobyl (2012), Between Science and Magic (2010), Here is a text about the world... (2008), New Work (2005), the sky is unfolding under you (2001), China, Crayons & Molly Numbers 1 through 10 (1996), and Late & Soon (Occident Trotting) (1993).

In 2018, a solo presentation of the artist’s work was presented at the new ICA Watershed, Boston. In 2017, the solo show A Runaway World was first exhibited at The Mistake Room, Los Angeles, and later traveled to Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul, and the Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain. In 2015, a comprehensive mid-career survey of her work, The Sympathetic Imagination, was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and later traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

Over the past decade, Thater’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at prominent institutions that include the Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2015); San Jose Museum of Art, California (2015); Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane (2011); Santa Monica Museum of Art, California (2010); Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2009); Natural History Museum, London (2009); Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany (2004); Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, Germany (2004); Dia Center for the Arts, New York (2001); and Secession, Vienna (2000).

In 2018, the artist was awarded an Art + Technology Lab Grant from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Other notable awards and fellowships include a California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2014), as well as an award for artistic innovation from the Center for Cultural Innovation, Los Angeles (2011), a James D. Phelan Award in Film and Video (2006), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2005), and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1993).

Work by the artist is represented in museum collections worldwide, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; The Art Institute of Chicago; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California; The Broad, Los Angeles; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin; Centre national des arts plastiques, Puteaux, France; CU Art Museum, University of Colorado, Boulder; Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain (FRAC) Rhône-Alpes, Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne, France; Friedrich Christian Flick Collection, Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany; Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg, France; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, California; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California; Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Sammlung Falckenberg, Deichtorhallen Hamburg; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California; San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, California; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, Strasbourg, France; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna; Vancouver Art Gallery; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Also a prolific writer, educator, and curator, Thater lives and works in Los Angeles.