Curator, Ann Temkin: During the 1980s, Judd continued to keep the basic box but he began to divide those boxes into units, into smaller sections, that activated all of the space within the box, as well as this space around it.
Poet, John Yau: He's using something almost generic, a box, and yet his boxes are not like anybody else's. There's something really subtle and fairly remarkable about what he does. By walking around the side of this piece, you see the colors differently, cause there'll be shadow inside the box.
He's really asking you, or challenging you, to see how sensitive you can become to what's in front of you. And I think, “I want that challenge!” [laughs] I think it's great. It's good to be reminded, because you know our life is so routine in a way. You kind of stop seeing things, and he's saying, “No, don't stop seeing, don't stop looking, don't stop engaging.”
Ann Temkin: In today's terms one thinks of mindfulness. And the mindfulness of being in the presence of a thing which has a very thought out, very considered construction and, in a sense, the nobility of that, and the care that went into making that work in that particular way, with this set of angles, not that set of angles. This is something that had great meaning to him in a way that went far beyond the world of art itself, and instead stretched much more into how to be a person in this world.