Donald Judd: Artwork: 1980, West 21st Street, New York, March 12–September 4, 2020

Works Exhibited

Donald Judd, untitled, 1980. Plywood, 12 × 80 × 4 feet (3.7 × 24.4 × 1.2 m) © 2020 Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever — Donald Judd
untitled, 1980
Plywood, 12 × 80 × 4 feet (3.7 × 24.4 × 1.2 m)
© 2020 Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Donald Judd, untitled, 1980 (detail). Plywood, 12 × 80 × 4 feet (3.7 × 24.4 × 1.2 m) © 2020 Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever — Donald Judd
untitled, 1980 (detail)
Plywood, 12 × 80 × 4 feet (3.7 × 24.4 × 1.2 m)
© 2020 Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Thumbnail - Donald Judd, untitled, 1980. Plywood, 12 × 80 × 4 feet (3.7 × 24.4 × 1.2 m) © 2020 Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

Thumbnail - Donald Judd, untitled, 1980 (detail). Plywood, 12 × 80 × 4 feet (3.7 × 24.4 × 1.2 m) © 2020 Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Rob McKeever

About

Space is made by an artist or architect; it is not found and packaged. It is made by thought.
—Donald Judd

Gagosian is pleased to present, in association with Judd Foundation, an installation of an untitled plywood work by Donald Judd from 1980—the largest single plywood construction he ever made. This will be the first time the work has been exhibited in New York since it was originally shown at Castelli Gallery in 1981. The exhibition coincides with a retrospective of Judd’s work at the Museum of Modern Art, New York—his first major American museum survey since 1988.

Made from Douglas fir, the work is a gridded construction in three parts, each defined by horizontal and diagonal planes. Measuring 80 feet wide, it spans the entire back wall of the 21st Street gallery. In its fusion of wall- and floor-based formats, the work confirms Judd’s mastery of light and space. It manifests his desire to realize “the simple expression of complex thought,” an idea he considered independent of the Minimalist label to which his work was—to his displeasure—often linked. Judd also used other materials at a large scale, including weathering steel (as in an untitled work from 1982 that is part of the collection of Western Washington University in Bellingham) and concrete (fifteen untitled works made between 1980 and 1984 that are installed at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas).

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From the Quarterly

In Conversation
Eileen Costello, Marta Kuzma, and Caitlin Murray on Donald Judd: Paintings

Art historian Eileen Costello and Yale School of Art professor Marta Kuzma discuss Donald Judd’s two-dimensional work and how the lessons he learned from the innovations of Abstract Expressionist and Color Field paintings permeate his entire body of work. Their conversation is moderated by Caitlin Murray, director of archives and programs at Judd Foundation.

In Conversation
Peter Ballantine and Martha Buskirk on Donald Judd

Peter Ballantine, Donald Judd’s longtime fabricator of plywood works, and Martha Buskirk, professor of art history and criticism at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts, discuss the development, production, and history of the largest plywood construction Judd ever made, an untitled work from 1980.

Behind the Art
Donald Judd: Exhibition Tour

In this video, Flavin Judd, the artist’s son and artistic director of Judd Foundation, leads a walkthrough of the exhibition Donald Judd: Artwork: 1980 at Gagosian, West 21st Street, New York. Flavin connects the work to the concurrent retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the permanent installations in Marfa, Texas, highlighting how it fits within Judd’s oeuvre.

Donald Judd: Artwork: 1980

Flavin Judd, the artist’s son and artistic director of Judd Foundation, speaks with Kara Vander Weg about the recent installation of the sculptor’s eighty-foot-long plywood work from 1980 at Gagosian, New York.

Donald Judd: Untitled: 1970

In this video, Flavin Judd, the artist’s son and artistic director of Judd Foundation, discusses a historic large-scale work by his father from 1970, ahead of its presentation at Art Basel Unlimited 2024.

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Fall 2022

The Fall 2022 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Jordan Wolfson’s House with Face (2017) on its cover.

There is No Neutral Space: The Architecture of Donald Judd, Part 2

In this second installment of a two-part essay, Julian Rose continues his exploration of Donald Judd’s engagement with architecture. Here, he examines the artist’s proposals for projects in Bregenz, Austria, and in Basel, arguing that Judd’s approach to shaping space provides a model for contemporary architectural production.

Building a Legacy
Judd Foundation Archives

Richard Shiff speaks with Caitlin Murray, director of archives and programs at Judd Foundation, about the archive of Donald Judd, how to approach materials that occupy the gray area between document and art, and some of the considerations unique to stewarding an archive housed within and adjacent to spaces conceived by the artist.

There Is No Neutral Space: The Architecture of Donald Judd, Part 1

Julian Rose explores the question: what does it mean for an artist to make architecture? Delving into the archives of Donald Judd, he examines three architectural projects by the artist. Here, in the first installment of a two-part essay, he begins with an invitation in Bregenz, Austria, in the early 1990s, before turning to an earlier project, in Marfa, Texas, begun in 1979.