Flavin Judd Curates Donald Judd Exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac Paris

The exhibition "Donald Judd" at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris, from April 6 to June 15, 2019, is curated by the artist's son, Flavin Judd, in collaboration with the Judd Foundation. It presents a non-chronological selection of works that highlight a pivotal shift in Donald Judd's practice: the transition from painting to sculpture in the early 1960s, where representation gave way to a direct engagement with real space. The show opens with a large floor piece from 1976, a hollow cube of raw plywood with a cadmium red light interior, exemplifying Judd's concept of sculpture without a pedestal, volume, or subject, where the object is exactly what it is. A key early work, "Untitled" (1963), features an open cube with wooden bars creating a visual staircase, painted in the same cadmium red, and includes a violet enameled aluminum bar that centers the horizon within the piece, abolishing external references. Later works in anodized aluminum and colored acrylic demonstrate how these materials allow internal space to express itself through floating light and color, reminiscent of Larry Bell, John McCracken, James Turrell, and Ann Veronica Janssen. The exhibition underscores Judd's radical redefinition of sculpture as its own reality, subject, and perspective.