Curator, Ann Temkin: This final, very large, gallery is devoted to that decade from the early eighties until Judd's death in 1994. I think it is in this last decade of his life that one remembers that Judd was a painter for the first decade of his adult life. Even just glancing briefly at this gallery, it's quite full of joy and exuberance.
These metal works are all made on a system that was developed in partnership with a Swiss design company outside Zurich that allowed him to do the kind of things he had only dreamed of. For example, with aluminum, the individual planes of the sculptures aren't welded together, they're actually folded by machine.
So the new technical advantages that he found here unleashed this creative spurt that caught people completely off guard. A lot of people barely recognized these as Judds. So it's a particular pleasure to be able to realize that they're very continuous with his early interests. You look back to the works of the 70s and 60s and see, “Oh my God, he really loved color all along.”