Each panel is made without a plan and later finessed into final place. Agematsu is no stranger toworking this way, his daily artworks, known as ‘zips,’ are always an improvisation held fast later. Theshapes and moods of these panels came together in quick spurts during a summer of great dismay inNew York, but their route to life occurred over long, devotional periods of time, as some of the objectson display have been in Agematsu’s possession since the late 1990s. Others were collected only thissummer. Objects have their shape and weight, their color, and beyond this a dimension for which thereis no scale, their importance. Yuji Agematsu’s new wall panels, about which we really know so little, arefurnished with objects as they leave the streets of New York and enter an exercise of improvisationunbroken since the 1980s.

Yuji Agematsu (b. 1956, Kanagawa, Japan) studied movement at Milford Graves’ Yara workshop, agreat influence on his daily walks. Agematsu’s routines and habits within New York City reflect thedaily jobs he worked until just shy of a decade ago. He has assisted artists Nam June Paik and SolLeWitt, worked as a videographer, a house painter, and at the renowned John Weber Gallery and theJudd Foundation. Recent solo exhibitions of Agematsu’s work include Day by Day at the PowerStation, Dallas (2018); Yuji Agematsu at Lulu, Mexico City (2019); 1995 & 2003, Miguel AbreuGallery, New York (2019); Times Square Time (Kodak All-Stars) at Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York(2020); zip: 05.01.14 . . . 05.31.14 at the Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius (2019); 2020 atSecession, Vienna (2021). In 2022 Agematsu presented a solo performance, Chasing Milford,organized by Artists Space. A selection of recent group exhibitions includes Meander with artist TaubaAuerbach at the Clark Art Institute, Massachusetts (2022); Greater New York at MoMA PS1, NewYork (2021-22); Journalier with artist On Kawara, La Maison de Rendez-Vous, Brussels (2020); andthe 57th Edition of the Carnegie International, Pittsburg (2018). His work is in the permanentcollections of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; Walker Art Center, Minnesota;Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem;Columbus Museum of Art; Loewe Foundation, Madrid; and the Pinault Collection, Paris.