Three of Tauba Auerbach's "grain paintings" line the walls of a gallery at The Clark. In the foreground are several of the artist's books.

Tauba Auerbach, "Ligature Drawing, 13 June 2022," 2022. Ink on paper with date stamp. Courtesy of the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

Tauba Auerbach, "Grain - Mandelbrot Quartet Escape (Ventrella Variation)," 2022. Acrylic paint on canvas, wood stretcher. Courtesy of the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

Artist Yuji Agematsu takes daily wandering walks through New York City, collecting items along his path, stopping briefly to add them to a cellophane wrapper in which he creates small sculptures. Seen here, "zip: 08.01.21 . . . 08.31.21, 2021 (detail: 08.23.21).," mixed media in cigarette pack cellophane wrapper.

Agematu's work includes notebooks with daily entries that include maps and descriptions of his daily collections. "Notebook for zip: 08.01.21 . . . 08.31.21, 2021 (detail: 08.23.21)," appears in the exhibition as an enlargement on the wall, not in its original form

Yuji Agematsu, "zip: 09.01.21 . . . 09.30.21, 2021 (detail: 09.21.21)," mixed media in cigarette pack cellophane wrapper. Private collection, Zurich.

In Yuji Agematsu's gallery in The Clark's Lunder Center, his "zip" sculptures are presented "in the round" allowing visitors to view the works from all sides.

Three of Tauba Auerbach's "grain paintings" line the walls of a gallery at The Clark. In the foreground are several of the artist's books.

WILLIAMSTOWN — Meander. By definition it means to follow a winding course, (derived from the Maeander River in Asia Minor); to wander without a goal or purpose. In the art world, it is a decorative pattern constructed from a continuous line that takes repeated right-angled turns; in other words, a self-avoiding line.

What: "Tauba Auerbach and Yuji Agematsu: Meander"

Where: Lunder Center, Clark Art Institute, 225 South St. Williamstown

When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday

Admission: $20. Free for 21 and under, student with a valid ID.

More information: 413-458-2303, clarkart.edu

In ancient Greece, the meander started showing up on buildings and objects as a decorative border, in a band, known as the Greek key because an individual section can resemble a primitive key. The meander can be simple — a single line — or complex, with multiple lines crossing each other at intervals, running parallel at other times. Such is the exhibition, "Tauba Auerbach and Yuji Agematsu: Meander," situated in parallel galleries in the Clark Art Institute's Lunder Center at Stone Hill through Oct. 16.

In parallel galleries, Auerbach's and Agematsu's works can be viewed independently, allowing the viewer to soak in each artist individually and then comparatively. 

"I wanted to present two very different artists to our audiences. The work is in multiple scales and multiple materials. They are so different in so many ways, but there is kind of a through line and I just started looking into this work and thinking what does the indirect line, the self-avoiding line, the meandering line mean in a broader context," Robert Wiesenberger, associate curator of contemporary projects at The Clark, said during a recent visit. "I've loved Yuji's work for some time. I thought it would be a nice counterpoint, so different, playful and good to spend time with. Yes, there is a concept behind the show, but if you want to see the shows as two solo shows, side-by-side, that's fine and if you want to think about it purely formerly, that's fine. But hopefully there are multiple levels with which you can engage with it."

Their work, like the artists themselves, is strikingly different on many levels.

Auerbach, 40, the younger of the two, works in more traditional media, painting, drawing and bookmaking, as well as with infrared imaging. But no matter the media, the meander, is ever present; weaving its way through the art, quite literally and always just under the surface — a presence that breathes life into and animates it. 

The meander also seems to guide Auerbach's way of moving and thinking, an indirect line that twists and turns in real life, Wiesenberger explained the artist is "producing commercially, highly-valued works," while at the same time producing artist's books through their own press — "open editions, unsigned, unnumbered, very inexpensive and democratically distributed."

Auerbach also is interested in the meander as a mathematical form, as a self-avoiding closed curve that intersects a line a number of times.

"Tauba is really deeply invested in mathematics — participates in mathematical conferences, writes papers, is very engaged with sciences, has studied in the last decade the meandering line as you see here," Wiesenberger said. "This form, it somehow exists, in the founding building of The Clark, this sort of white temple to art and in things like ancient Greco-Roman tradition but also it's a global form. This form appears in ancient Mexican architecture, like in the buildings in Oaxaca. It appears in the Ming Dynasty in woodwork and lacquer ware. There's something about this form that is persistent in culture but also in nature.

Tauba Auerbach, "Ligature Drawing, 13 June 2022," 2022. Ink on paper with date stamp. Courtesy of the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

"Tauba sees this indirect line, waveforms in physics, self-filling curves in geometry, in the helixes of our DNA. Tauba's question really is: What if ornament isn't superficial? What if it's actually profound? And that we respond to it because of something we deeply see in it and identify with?"

To explore these hypotheses, Auerbach creates ligature drawings. (Ligature being the line that connects letters in writing script, in musical notes and notations.) They are made in abundance, with a chisel tip marker or brush-tip pen.

Auerbach, Wiesenberger says, went on to become a sign painter after studying math at Stanford University.

The ligature drawings, repeating patterns of black ink swirling on white paper, seem, at first blush, to be made by a mechanical hand; the precision too fine to be made by a human.

"Sign painting requires this combination of precision but also speed. If you're too careful and slow, the line won't have any sort of life to it. And if you're too fast, it won't work either," Wiesenberger said. "Each of these [drawings] is done in one sitting. There is this combination that exists throughout this show of the very analytical and very intuitive idea. In this case, the idea is of different geometric, mathematical curves but also gesture and of the body.

"In a sense, Tauba is really interested in not only conceptually, mathematically understanding different forms but also in an embodied, physical somatic sense of moving through them — with the hand, of the arm, of the body — in conjunction with music in this very improvisational, intuitive sense."

Most fascinating in concept and in practice are, perhaps, Auerbach's series of "grain paintings," each a canvas layered in bright paint, a large geometric shape inset in a colorless contrast.

The paintings are made with a silicone tool the artist has created with a mold; wrapped around a cardboard cylinder. The tool is convex, has typography, texture.

Tauba Auerbach, "Grain - Mandelbrot Quartet Escape (Ventrella Variation)," 2022. Acrylic paint on canvas, wood stretcher. Courtesy of the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

"It represents that various rote mathematically defined curve," Wiesenberger said.

Multiple layers of a paint are sprayed onto the canvas, and while the canvas is still wet, Auerbach grazes it with the tool, a roller, in one stroke, subtracting paint from the canvas as it passes over. In its wake is left a geometric curve, a form that is, in itself, complex and full of life as it emerges from the canvas. 

In Yuji Agematsu's gallery in The Clark's Lunder Center, his "zip" sculptures are presented "in the round" allowing visitors to view the works from all sides.

While Auerbach sees the indirect line in every aspect of the world surrounding them, Agematsu, is, in his practice, the meandering line. 

Agematsu, 60, immigrated from Japan in the 1980s. "And since then, he has gone every day, in New York City, on these wandering, aimless walks. He takes a cellophane wrapper from a cigarette pack and each day makes a little sculpture. He picks up little things that are in the street places them in the pack," Wiesenberger said. 

The sculptures — which Agematsu calls "Zips," a term from when he originally used Ziploc bags instead of cigarette pack wrappers — at The Clark, are lined up in three rows, each row representing a month of work, three months in all, July 1 to Sept. 30, 2021. 

Artist Yuji Agematsu takes daily wandering walks through New York City, collecting items along his path, stopping briefly to add them to a cellophane wrapper in which he creates small sculptures. Seen here, "zip: 08.01.21 . . . 08.31.21, 2021 (detail: 08.23.21).," mixed media in cigarette pack cellophane wrapper.

Here, we see the meander as a motif, a method, a way of moving, Wiesenberger says. 

"He used to study with a famous jazz musician, Milford Graves, someone who was into free jazz percussion and composition, and syncing up creative musical production with the body. For Yuji, this is a very improvisational practice ... Yuji is interested in these works both aesthetically but also anthropologically. Some of them are very beautiful and some of them are a little gross. He as a New Yorker is very interested in the diversity of the city and the people who live around him and the things that live around him, this sort of animist, who has a sense of living things, of all kinds — natural, artificial, it doesn't matter, all are part of the flow. Flow of people through space, of things through space, of the body through space is a big part of Yuji's work."

The cellophane packets are filled with daily finds, which the artist refers to as "detritus," not trash, a term too disparaging for the contents of his sculptures.

Not everything is worthy of a sculpture, items are left behind, to age or to remain unfound by his hand.

Yuji Agematsu, "zip: 09.01.21 . . . 09.30.21, 2021 (detail: 09.21.21)," mixed media in cigarette pack cellophane wrapper. Private collection, Zurich.

"It's very improvisational in the sense that he doesn't go out each day, collect a ton of stuff and take it back to his studio, where he selects from it and composes it. It goes in, one piece at a time, as he's walking. Some days he goes for a long walk and pieces are overflowing. Some days it's a short walk and it's very spare," Wiesenberger said.

But everything that is collected, added to the pack — gum wrappers, hair bands, cigarette butts, plastic combs, buttons, lost broaches, broken chopsticks, mascara wands, broken earbuds and soy sauce packets — are carefully documented in a notebook which holds records of the route of the walk, location of items, date and time.

Pages of Agematsu's notebooks, corresponding with "zips" on display have been enlarged and silkscreened, hung on the gallery walls. A translation is available in the gallery guide.

"It's basically like a poem that he's written about the day, the walk and the atmospheric conditions of the day," Wiesenberger said. "In each of these maps you can see some sort of landmarks, like this is a Popeye's Chicken. This is a construction site. This is developed. [You can see] things he's found like a plastic fork, chewing gum."

The presentation of Agematsu's work, he said, is unique in itself. Typically, it's shown on the wall in an acrylic case, in the shape of a calendar. At The Clark, the layout allows visitors to view the sculptures in the round, to meander through and peer into the work from above.

And that's a good thing, because there's a lot too see. 

Agematu's work includes notebooks with daily entries that include maps and descriptions of his daily collections. "Notebook for zip: 08.01.21 . . . 08.31.21, 2021 (detail: 08.23.21)," appears in the exhibition as an enlargement on the wall, not in its original form

What: "Tauba Auerbach and Yuji Agematsu: Meander"

Where: Lunder Center, Clark Art Institute, 225 South St. Williamstown

On view: Through Oct. 16

When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday

Admission: $20. Free for 21 and under, student with a valid ID.

More information: 413-458-2303, clarkart.edu

Jennifer Huberdeau can be reached at jhuberdeau@berkshireeagle.com or 413-496-6229. On Twitter: @BE_DigitalJen

Jennifer Huberdeau is The Eagle's features editor. Prior to The Eagle, she worked at The North Adams Transcript. She is a 2021 Rabkin Award Winner, 2020 New England First Amendment Institute Fellow and a 2010 BCBS Health Care Fellow.

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