Yuji Agematsu’s zip: 01.01.06 . . . 06.30.06 is an unconventional portrait of a very specific time and place: January 1 through June 30, 2006, in New York. After moving to the city in 1980, Agematsu began regularly exploring his new surroundings on foot, occasionally picking up objects along the way. “I started marking time and location because I came from another country,” he said. “I wanted to organize my lifestyle and make my own purpose.”
Visitors with Yuji Agematsu’s zip: 01.01.06 . . . 06.30.06, 2006, and untitled, ca. 1993, on view in We the People: New Art from the Collection. Photograph by Mark Why.
Agematsu has continued this tradition to this day. Beginning in 1997, he started carefully organizing selections from the objects he picked up during his walks in the cellophane sleeves used to wrap boxes of cigarettes. The resulting small sculptures are presented to mimic the layout of a monthly calendar, and each collection of shelves becomes a kind of diary or time capsule of Agematsu’s life.
