From a Year's Worth of Sidewalk Debris, 365 Works of Art

New York Times

31-07-2025

On a morning in late June, the artist Yuji Agematsu, eyes down, walked along Eastern Parkway in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, looking for things in the dirt and crab grass that no one else would notice: lollipop sticks, bottlecaps, broken glass. 'So many stuff,' he said. 'So many disposable dental floss, very iconic object in this district. By the seating area, so many candy wrappers, ice cream sticks.' He patted the ground affectionately. 'I'm interested in fragments. Each reminds of what used to be.'
Since 1985, Agematsu has been foraging daily on the streets of New York, finding castoffs he eventually transforms in his studio in Dumbo into a little sculpture that he encloses in the cellophane wrapper of a cigarette pack. After the year ends, he places each assemblage on a shelf or in a vitrine, which is organized like a calendar to mark the day it was collected. Two years' worth are on display, on Fridays and Saturdays through the end of August, at the Harlem house of Gavin Brown, the art dealer and gallerist, where 2023 is on view, and at the Judd Foundation in SoHo, showing 2024.
Like his way of working, Agematsu's art requires a slowing down. It takes time to appreciate what is driving his small, subtle compositions. He doesn't alter what he gathers. He simply makes combinations. In one grouping at Gavin Brown, two wires are stripped above the insulation, so that frayed copper filaments spread like the tops of palm trees. In another, a metallic red, green and yellow candy wrapper is folded to create a fishtail, while a bent Q-Tip rises above it like a ghostly arm. Arrayed in Lucite vitrines, these sparkling miniatures when seen from a distance might be an exhibit of Roman glass.
At the Judd Foundation, the pieces rest on wooden shelves — inspired, Agematsu says, by the stripped-down furniture made by the artist Donald Judd, who bought the five-story cast-iron building in 1968. Since Judd's death in 1994, the building has been maintained by the Judd Foundation. Starting in 1996, Agematsu, who is 69, worked there as superintendent and handyman, until he quit in 2018. 'I came from another country, I came from the bottom,' he said. 'I needed the challenge to be a full-time artist.'
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