Donald Judd's furniture: Art of material honesty

Installation view of "Donald Judd: Furniture" at Storage by Hyundai Card in Seoul / Courtesy of Judd Foundation

American artist Donald Judd (1928-94) had one pet peeve that “drove him crazy” — the moment a material pretended to be anything other than itself.

He would point to things like fiberglass made to mimic the texture of stone. For Judd, the question was disarmingly simple. “Why not just let it be fiberglass? Fiberglass is already a material. Why not use it like that?” recalled his son, Flavin Judd.

That insistence on honesty in materials, Flavin suggested, reached back to the artist’s early grounding: his training in philosophy and his roots as the grandson of Midwestern farmers, where the unspoken rule was that if you set out to do something, you did it plainly, without pretense.

“There’s already so much mendacity and lying in the world. Why would you add to that?” said the younger Judd, artistic director of the Judd Foundation.

The idea of material clarity — of art as a “thing that is available to you immediately” — became the backbone of Donald Judd’s practice. While he began as a painter, he soon gravitated toward three-dimensional forms. His stacked rectangular units, often rendered in steel or concrete, inhabit space with unmistakable directness. They refuse disguise of any kind: no illusion, no metaphor, nothing but their own presence. These works made him a landmark figure in postwar minimalism, though he openly resisted the label to the end.

Installation view of "Donald Judd: Furniture" at Storage by Hyundai Card / Courtesy of Judd Foundation

Labels aside, one thing remains clear. Judd’s objects reveal exactly what they are the moment you encounter them. That same philosophy carries through to his furniture as well — a repertoire now receiving its first full exhibition in Korea at Storage by Hyundai Card in Seoul.

Flavin described his father’s midcareer quest into furniture as something born out of both necessity and a creative spark. Although Judd first designed a bed and sinks for his New York studio in the early 1970s, the endeavor didn’t truly take root until the family settled in the small desert town of Marfa, Texas, in 1977.

In Marfa, there simply wasn’t any furniture available in the market that suited his taste. One of the first pieces he decided to put together himself was a bed, followed by two desks for his two children. Later works were built by local carpenters, following directions that came from Judd’s sparse drawings or brief verbal instructions. “Don was a terrible carpenter,” his son said with a smile.

"Donald Judd: Furniture" includes the artist's furniture drawings, which appear more as instructions than renderings. Courtesy of Judd Foundation

At “Donald Judd: Furniture,” 38 pieces produced between the 1970s and ’90s are on view, alongside a wider selection of silkscreen prints and woodcuts. On the walls also hang his furniture drawings, which appear more as instructions than renderings.

Every daybed, writing desk, chair, bench and bookshelf is shown plainly here, with no fabrication or decorative finish to disguise what it’s made of: hardwood, plywood, bent steel. “Again, he liked things that were as honest as possible,” Flavin said.

Perhaps one unfortunate irony of the show is that, despite Judd’s emphasis on functionality and the palpable immediacy of his furniture, none of the pieces on display can be touched or engaged with.

“Any exhibition of furniture is slightly misleading,” the Judd Foundation’s artistic director noted. “The function of a gallery is to show you things you can’t touch, but that’s misleading because you’re supposed to sit on it. It’s furniture.”

“Donald Judd: Furniture” runs through April 26, 2026, at Storage by Hyundai Card.