Exterior 101 Spring Avenue in Soho, pedestrians noisily stream by. However inside this five-story historic house is a distinct world the place the lingering aura of Donald Judd’s quiet presence resides. Judd bought the constructing in 1968 and, together with a later residence in Marfa, Texas, it was his house till his loss of life at age 65 in 1994.
The constructing could be toured by appointment, with the bottom ground open to the general public as an exhibition house on Fridays and Saturdays. Once I visited, artist Yuji Agematsu and his assistant have been putting in his new present. Agematsu, with shaggy hair, grey beard, and glasses, moved with the quiet precision of a dancer. His fingers appeared attuned to spidery actions, the actual minute pinches required of his apply. He hunched over a field neatly lined with American Spirit cigarette packages that held his tiny compositions — one for every day of the month, every month mounted on small white cabinets he designed. The room would quickly maintain a full yr’s value of works (366), composites of walks, ideas, gestures, remnants.
Set up view of Yuji Agematsu, 2023-2024 at 101 Spring Avenue, Judd Basis, New York (photograph Timothy Doyon © Judd Basis; artwork © Yuji Agematsu)
Since 1996, Agematsu has taken a two-hour morning stroll each day in his adopted metropolis of New York, jotting down notes and places and choosing up detritus alongside the way in which. When one thing snares his consideration, he locations it within the cellophane wrapper contained in the cigarette field he carries in his shirt pocket. The primary chosen object of the day “wakes up my eyes and I start to open up and find more,” he mentioned. It additionally determines the path of the following selection. When he will get again to his house, he considers the composition that has amassed within the cellophane and begins slight manipulations earlier than gluing issues in place. He calls the compositions “zips,” borrowing a time period from the painter Barnett Newman, maybe acknowledging Newman’s adherence to verticality. The vertical gestures in Agematsu’s works, such because the stick of a lollipop, a tiny department, or a dragonfly wing breaching the lip of the sleeve, are additionally essential, representing uprightness, positivity, and self-respect.
Agematsu labored for the Judd Basis as the overall supervisor for 21 years. The concord between the house and his zips lies throughout the ideas of care and intention, of each artists feeling and noticing trivia resembling the way in which gentle hits a passage of metal, or a sure second or spot yields completely different materials considerations.
Yuji Agematsu, “Zip: 01-01-2024–12-31-2024,” element, blended media in cigarette pack cellophane wrapper
With 366 objects in a room, I puzzled if my consideration would wane. However Agematsu’s compositions saved delivering distinctive jolts of surprising convivence: A chunk of burnt crimson string that wisps round a tiny department, nestled in a forest ground of avenue compost — an orange scrap, a inexperienced one thing; one other with a curled, dried orange peel surmounted by a tangle of coarse hair. Every work is an element portray, half sculpture, half collage, half storage vessel of time and place. The influence of the zips lies with the formal qualities in addition to the conceptual recognition of a fantastic purpose: to honor each day, to carry reverence and self-discipline to this job of residing, to acknowledge every human’s durational situation. Agematsu studied with the avant-garde jazz musician and polyglot Milford Graves, who taught him how the motion or rhythms of the physique have an effect on psychological and artistic output.
On the Harlem house of former gallery proprietor Gavin Brown, half two of this exhibition was underway. The bottom ground is a completed gallery house the place Brown periodically phases initiatives. Once I visited, Agematsu was putting in yr 2023. He talked about that as an immigrant who moved to New York Metropolis from Japan in 1980, he has skilled prejudice. A part of his relationship to detritus comes from valuing what others understand as disposable. Musing on elements of displacement, he puzzled, “When a bottle of Heineken is on your shelf, it is one thing. When it is on the ground, it is completely another. Why?”
I seen one important interruption within the passages of zips. In September 2023, two cellophanes maintain virtually nothing: One incorporates a crumpled institutional paper; one other holds a folded piece of gauze. Agematsu mentioned he was within the hospital. Only a blip within the stream. He quickly resumed his undertaking, turning the neglected into the extraordinary.
Yuji Agematsu, “Zip: 01-01-2024–12-31-2024,” element, blended media in cigarette pack cellophane wrapper 
Set up view of Yuji Agematsu, 2023-2024 at 101 Spring Avenue, Judd Basis, New York (photograph Timothy Doyon © Judd Basis; artwork © Yuji Agematsu)
Yuji Agematsu, “Zip: 01-01-2024–12-31-2024,” element, blended media in cigarette pack cellophane wrapper 
Yuji Agematsu, “Zip: 01-01-2024–12-31-2024,” element, blended media in cigarette pack cellophane wrapper
Yuji Agematsu: 2023–2024 is offered by the Judd Basis and continues on the Judd Basis house (101 Spring Avenue, Soho, Manhattan) and Gavin Brown’s house (229 Lenox Avenue, Harlem, Manhattan) by way of August 30. The exhibition was organized by Judd Basis in collaboration with Agematsu and designed by Scott Ponik.
