Patrick Doan

 

Abstract – Drawings + Photographs

Current | Times: Finishing as Ending

Constructing Shadows in Marfa

 2023

 

Color Photograph

12” x 20”

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In the winter of 1988, the American artist Donald Judd began construction on a complex of ten concrete buildings to be situated at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. They were designed to house a permanent collection of art work he had completed during the late 1970’s. Of the ten buildings proposed, two were begun, but never completed. Construction was halted in the fall of 1988 and never resumed. Had they been completed, this complex would have marked his largest and most ambitious new freestanding building endeavor, fusing together the realm of art, architecture, and placemaking he actively and fervently sought to make present.

 

While the concrete buildings are part of the permanent collection at the Chinati Foundation, they are not open to the public. Situated at the far southwestern edge of the Foundation’s property among the remnants of former bunk house foundations and abandoned walk paths, one catches only glimpses of these buildings from a distance and at certain vantage points. Considered within his larger body of work, they sit in the shadows due to their unfinished state. They exist in a realm of suspended animation, begging the question, how do we approach and inhabit them? Are they ruins or a dormant construction site in waiting? What stories do they tell in their making or secrets do they hold in their unfinished state? What constitutes finished, both physically and intellectually? 

 

Despite their incomplete state, these buildings bring to bear most poignantly the inherent tension and struggles Judd encountered in the translation and merging of architectural and artistic dreams and ideas into constructive realities. As a ruin or construction site, they are exposed, unfiltered, and raw. In relationship to his larger body of work, the concrete buildings are important because they are a synthesis and culmination of work Judd cultivated over years of practice. They are informed by his paintings, ‘specific objects’, building endeavors, and installations within the landscape. What the concrete buildings struggle with in their craft and incompleteness they make up for in artistic vision and intent.

 

The drawings and photographs included in this exhibition represent two approaches I have taken in trying to inhabit the work both physically and imaginatively. The elevation drawings of the three proposed building types are the beginnings of a series of speculative drawings I have started as a way to reconstruct and trace both Judd’s drawn and constructed lines. The selected photographs document the existing buildings. What became apparent in photographing them was a tension they embodied. Though construction stopped over thirty-five years ago, they sit in silent anticipation, like a ruin or construction site, awaiting now not their physical completion, but on our poetic imagination to complete them.

 

Special thanks to Meredith Doan, Frank Weiner, and Hunter Pittman for their insight into the development and refinement of this exhibit.