St. Bart's Gallery Opening Features Donald Judd and Richard Nonas

  • November 20, 2014
St. Bart's Gallery Opening Features Donald Judd and Richard Nonas
As aesthetic theorists and practicing sculptors, Judd and Nonas have altered the trajectory of art history in reconsidering sculptural materials and the act of installation.

Though allied by the use of simple geometric forms often in sequences or series laid out on the floor or hung on the wall, and the use of common construction materials (for Judd - metal, wood, and Plexiglas; for Nonas - stone, metal, and wood), the two artists represent divergent sculptural practices. Judd is more assertive in shaping matter to his will where Nonas adopts a more considered means.

Judd's mechanical forms, such as his copper work Untitled, 1970, are mathematical and contemplative, with fine ‘do not touch' finishes that reflect and transmit light. Works such as Swiss Progression, 1985 evoke constructivist origins, mixing together differently colored pre-made forms in long horizontal compositions. When installed, Judd's forms remain resolutely formal and unyielding to context.

Nonas' arrangements of his own hand-wrought, mechanically formed, and found elements respond to the specifics of each location and provoke awareness of history and culture. The artist has less interest in the traditional fetishized treatment of sculptural elements and considers his forms malleable and inter-changeable actors that articulate space and narrative. While Nonas' forms are resolutely formal, occasional resemblances to primitive domestic forms occur (such as ladders in Untitled, 2012, masks, as in Untitled, 1989, and seats), thus raising our awareness of Nonas' background in anthropology before turning to art making in the late 60s.

Born in 1936 in New York, Richard Nonas studied social anthropology and literature at Lafayette College and Columbia University and spent ten years doing anthropological fieldwork in northern Ontario, Canada's Yukon Territory, the Sonoran Desert, northern Mexico and southern Arizona. In 1967 Nonas returned to New York in 1967 where he began work as a sculptor. Nonas has exhibited extensively and his works are in public collections around the world.

Donald Judd was born in Excelsior Springs, Missouri, in 1928. At Columbia University, New York, he studied philosophy and art history and began to produce his earliest paintings. Judd's work has been exhibited internationally since the 1960s and is included in numerous museum collections worldwide. Permanent installations of the artist's work exist at Judd Foundation spaces in New York City, at 101 Spring Street, and Marfa, Texas.

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