ART CITIES: Basel-Donald Judd

Donald Judd’s radical work and thinking helped shape the look of the late twentieth century and continues to influence artists, architects, and designers worldwide. He has exercised a transformative influence over the ways in which both art objects and practical designs are produced, exhibited, encountered, and used.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo Gagosian Archive

In an exhibition of works by Donald Judd are on show ten single-unit, wall-mounted works made by the artist in Switzerland between 1987 and 1991. Each work measures 25 × 100 × 25 centimeters (approximately 10 × 39 × 10 inches) and is fabricated in Judd’s signature mediums: anodized aluminum and plexiglass sheets in a range of opacities and colors, from amber and chartreuse to black. Judd’s radical art making and thinking helped shape the look of the late twentieth century and continues to influence artists, architects, and designers worldwide. He has exercised a transformative impact on the ways in which both art objects and practical designs are produced, exhibited, encountered, and used. Through his globally recognized visual work and his incisive critical and theoretical writing, Judd introduced an art that exists on its own determinedly physical terms, removed from notions of metaphor and illusion and about the here and now with no recourse to past narratives. Individually, each of his works delineates created interior space and the exterior space it occupies; there are no identical works within the group. These precisely constructed works are defined by Judd’s interest in materials and color. Non-referential and self-contained, they emphasize the intrinsic qualities of their components and the relationships between part and whole. The uniform proportionality of their exteriors exists in relation to their interior divisions, as the matte sheen of aluminum contrasts with the glossy or translucent plexiglass sheets positioned on the works’ vertical surfaces closest to the wall. The compositions are bisected by aluminum sheets, with some works partitioned by aluminum planes on their front-facing surfaces. Orchestrating subtle and dramatic interplays of light, shadow, and color, the pieces investigate space, color, and existence—for Judd, the main concerns of art. Judd spent significant time in Switzerland, and key exhibitions of his work were mounted there from 1969, including at Kunstmuseum Basel in 1976 and 2004. In 1987, he established Eichholteren, a home and studio on a lakeside site near Küssnacht-am-Rigi, remodeling its architecture through 1993.

Photo: Donald Judd, Untitled, 1991, detail, Clear and turquoise anodized aluminum with blue over red plexiglass, 9 7/8 x 39 3/8 x 9 7/8 inches (25 x 100 x 25 cm), © Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, Photo: Maris Hutchinson, Courtesy Gagosian

Info: Gagosian Gallery, Rheinsprung 1, Basel, Switzerland, Duration: 10/6-7/9/2024, Days & Hour by appointment only, https://gagosian.com/