Untitled

An influential practitioner of what would come to be called—much to his chagrin— Minimalism, Donald Judd preferred to describe his often sleek, industrially fabricated works as “specific objects,” neither painting nor sculpture as understood traditionally. His primary form became the box—solid or hollow, enclosed or open—often in exacting, serial arrays. Untitled comprises Judd’s seventh “stack,” a compositional mode that became the signature manifestation of his ideas. Every stack is installed like a spine or column, not only cantilevered out from the wall but also connecting floor to ceiling. Judd sought to banish symbolism from abstraction, intending his work to be experienced physically. This “stack” casts a lush orange glow against the wall around it; as a result, negative space is as much a part of the work as the boxes themselves.