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Robert Smithson

-5-

In Mineralogy, solidified masses of rock are called "concretions"; many of Judd's works suggest what could be abstract concretions of geological structure. Judd has brought into existence artifices of lime, clay, flint, sandstone, iron, etc. His strata is cantilevered off walls, while his deposits rest on floors. Some of his surfaces have the look of rock that is billions of years old. One thinks of a petrified world without any trace of life. Fossils don't even exist in it. Only barren surfaces with the characteristics of shale and ice. [[strikethrough]] Blocks of a mysterious material, without any reason for being, simply exist. [[/strikethrough]] -state world. It is a world without creation.

The formal logic of crystallography, apart from any preconceived scientific content, relates to Judd's art in an abstract way. If we define an abstract crystal as a solid bounded by symmetrically grouped surfaces, which have definite relationships to a set of imaginary lines called axes, then we have a clue to the structure of Judd's "pink plexiglass box". Inside the box five wires are strung in a way that resembles very strongly the crystallographic idea of axes. Yet, Judd's axes don't correspond with any natural crystal. The entire box would collapse without the tension of the axes. The five axes polarize between two stainless steel sides. The inside surfaces of the steel sides are visable [[visable]] through the transparent plexiglass. Every surface is within full view, which makes the inside and outside equally important. Like many of Judd's works, the separate parts of the box are held together by tension and balance, both of which add to its static existance [[existence]]. This work was exhibited in the "Plastic Show" at the Daniels Gallery in the spring of 1965.