Donald Judd - Working Papers - Sprüth Magers London
Sprüth Magers London exhibits 33 drawings by Donald Judd (1928-94), created between 1963 and 1993. From January 13 to February 18, 2012.
Source: Sprüth Magers London / theartwolf.com
All 33 of the drawings on display have some connection to Judd's objects. In the earliest ones he is still working out (or rejecting) sculptural ideas he would make himself. Later drawings are Judd's part of the fabrication process, a script or score-like relationship to the work's subsequent 'performance' by others - simultaneously the original of the work and not comparable to the real thing at all. For context (and comparison), the exhibition includes a group of previously unavailable fabricator's shop drawings.
Several elements are more 'available' in Judd's drawings than in any of his other work. There is the rare opportunity to see his 'hand' and signature, both otherwise deliberately absent from the objects, for reasons vital to maintaining the hard-fought position he had achieved against symbolic expression. There is also a privileged view into the delicate navigation Judd makes between depiction and anti-depiction - the subtle and not so subtle ways he sabotages pictorial representation while communicating enough (usually pictorial) information to make (or in other cases to record) the object.
About the artist
Donald Judd lived and worked in New York and Marfa, Texas. Solo exhibitions included The Whitney
Museum of American Art (1968, 1988), The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (1975), Kunsthalle, Bern
(1976), Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (1987), Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis (1991), DIA
Centre for the Arts, New York (1999 - 2000), Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis (2001), Tate Modern, London
(2004) and Kunstmuseum, Basel (2005).
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