Set up view of “Donald Judd: Furnishings” at Storage by Hyundai Card in Seoul / Courtesy of Judd Basis
American artist Donald Judd (1928-94) had one pet peeve that “drove him loopy” — the second a cloth pretended to be something aside from itself.
He would level to issues like fiberglass made to imitate the feel of stone. For Judd, the query was disarmingly easy. “Why not simply let or not it’s fiberglass? Fiberglass is already a cloth. Why not use it like that?” recalled his son, Flavin Judd.
That insistence on honesty in supplies, Flavin recommended, reached again to the artist’s early grounding: his coaching in philosophy and his roots because the grandson of Midwestern farmers, the place the unstated rule was that should you got down to do one thing, you probably did it plainly, with out pretense.
“There’s already a lot lying and mendacity on the planet. Why would you add to that?” stated the youthful Judd, creative director of the Judd Basis.
The thought of fabric readability — of artwork as a “factor that’s out there to you instantly” — turned the spine of Donald Judd’s observe. Whereas he started as a painter, he quickly gravitated towards three-dimensional kinds. His stacked rectangular items, usually rendered in metal or concrete, inhabit house with unmistakable directness. They refuse disguise of any type: no phantasm, no metaphor, nothing however their very own presence. These works made him a landmark determine in postwar minimalism, although he brazenly resisted the label to the tip.
Set up view of “Donald Judd: Furnishings” at Storage by Hyundai Card / Courtesy of Judd Basis
Labels apart, one factor stays clear. Judd’s objects reveal precisely what they’re the second you encounter them. That very same philosophy carries via to his furnishings as nicely — a repertoire now receiving its first full exhibition in Korea at Storage by Hyundai Card in Seoul.
Flavin described his father’s midcareer quest into furnishings as one thing born out of each necessity and a artistic spark. Though Judd first designed a mattress and sinks for his New York studio within the early Seventies, the endeavor didn’t really take root till the household settled within the small desert city of Marfa, Texas, in 1977.
In Marfa, there merely wasn’t any furnishings out there available in the market that suited his style. One of many first items he determined to place collectively himself was a mattress, adopted by two desks for his two kids. Later works have been constructed by native carpenters, following instructions that got here from Judd’s sparse drawings or temporary verbal directions. “Don was a horrible carpenter,” his son stated with a smile.
“Donald Judd: Furnishings” consists of the artist’s furnishings drawings, which seem extra as directions than renderings. Courtesy of Judd Basis
At “Donald Judd: Furnishings,” 38 items produced between the Seventies and ’90s are on view, alongside a wider collection of silkscreen prints and woodcuts. On the partitions additionally hold his furnishings drawings, which seem extra as directions than renderings.
Each daybed, writing desk, chair, bench and bookshelf is proven plainly right here, with no fabrication or ornamental end to disguise what it’s fabricated from: hardwood, plywood, bent metal. “Once more, he appreciated issues that have been as trustworthy as doable,” Flavin stated.
Maybe one unlucky irony of the present is that, regardless of Judd’s emphasis on performance and the palpable immediacy of his furnishings, not one of the items on show may be touched or engaged with.
“Any exhibition of furnishings is barely deceptive,” the Judd Basis’s creative director famous. “The perform of a gallery is to indicate you issues you may’t contact, however that’s deceptive since you’re supposed to take a seat on it. It’s furnishings.”
“Donald Judd: Furnishings” runs via April 26, 2026, at Storage by Hyundai Card.
