PaperCity Magazine

November 2019- Houston

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75 David Rabinowitch, and John Wesley. For those who want to drill down on Judd's life and practice don't forget to make a visit to the Judd Foundation Marfa, an essential education on the artist's early life and practice. The counterpart to Judd's foundation in SoHo, the Marfa property, called La Mansana de Chinati, offers visitors an opportunity to view early architectural projects and early works along with his personal library, while The Studios feature examples of his paintings from the 1950s and '60s, his celebrated furniture along with his private collection of modernist and period furniture. Having waited the better part of my adult life to visit Chinati, my expectations were colored by Judd's intellectually rigorous and minimalist sculptures that now seem conformed by a narrow orthodoxy that I incorrectly presumed would overshadow my overall experience of Chinati. Yes, Judd's beautiful, hard-edge aesthetic is on full view, in stunning works such as 100 untitled works in mill aluminum, 1982-1986 — a monumental installation comprised of 100 box-like forms with the same outer dimensions, yet with interiors unique in every piece. But Chinati contains other aesthetic experiences that give subtle nuance to Judd's enterprise. I was not expecting to encounter the work of Pop artist John Wesley, for example, whose flat, spare compositions have arguably been associated with Minimalism even though he felt more kinship with the Surrealists. He had a funny obsession with the American comic strip Blondie, and many of his works featured the aforementioned character and her bumbling husband, Dagwood, in bizarre and sexually heightened compositions. Word and typography are represented at Chinati in a room dedicated to the work of Carl Andre. Suspend for a moment, if you will, the man from the art, and you will be treated to an impressive display of his concrete poetry, which some have described as mirroring sculptural qualities in textual form. Marfa isn't just about Donald Judd's legacy. In fact, it's a living, breathing community of artists and artistic institutions that continue to shape and expand the context of contemporary art. Marfa Ballroom, founded in 2003, is a dynamic institution dedicated to the presentation of visual art, film, music, and performance with an emphasis on projects that might be impossible to realize in a more traditional gallery or museum setting. Inde/Jacobs is a contemporary art gallery with a rotating schedule of exhibitions by a stable of artists that include Jarrod Beck, Glen Hanson, and Matt Magee, along with Marfa's elder statesmen Dan Flavin and John Chamberlain. An exhibition of recent work by Glen Hanson and Matt Magee engaged in a formal play of reductive shape and pattern-making in diverse materials and processes. Hanson uses a traditional method of the Lakota tribe to sew glass beads upon tanned deer- hide, while Magee presented paintings and works on paper featuring geometric points, lines, surfaces, and angles more commonly associated with mathematics and architecture, that reference language, social media, and numerology. Marfa appears to be growing comfortably into middle age with a variety of art experiences intent on providing a diversity of audiences with local culture as the specter of internationalism looms in the background. Gilbert Vicario is The Selig Family Chief Curator at the Phoenix Art Museum. Judd Foundation, Winter Bedroom, La Mansana de Chinati/The Block, Marfa, TX Donald Judd's 15 untitled works in mill aluminum, 1982-1986, at The Chinati Foundation Beatriz Cortez's Shields, 2019, at Ballroom Marfa Donald Judd's 15 untitled works in concrete, 1980-1984, at The Chinati Foundation (continued from page 68)

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