Yuji Agematsu
American and Japanese, born 1956
In untitled, Yuji Agematsu transforms a conventional artistic genre—the still life of the artist’s tools in the studio—by applying it to his unconventional artistic practice. Here, a pair of worn leather shoes sitting atop an equally worn section of cobblestone allude to his daily ritual of combing the streets of New York in search of the pieces of used chewing gum, dead insects, and additional small bits of refuse that serve as the raw material for other sculptures. In addition to untitled, the Albright-Knox owns a larger installation that features findings from his walks from the first six months of 2006: zip: 01.01.06 . . . 06.30.06. Agematsu’s artmaking suggests a reconsideration of some of our most mundane activities: negotiating urban space and the ways in which the items we keep or choose to discard speak to the stories we tell about ourselves and our histories.