Since I was a kid I loved to walk around without purpose. Then I started to pick up objects. It’s a fundamental movement: walking and touching the ground. – Yuji Agematsu
After moving to New York from Japan in 1980, Yuji Agematsu began collecting small bits of debris from the streets on his regular walks through the city. He meticulously catalogueues these objects first in notebooks where he tracks his path and the object’s location with hand-drawn maps, then in carefully labelled boxes. These bits of detritus – cast-offs from the bustling life of the city – might remain on file for years before finding their way into one of Agematsu’s assemblage works. In this deft composition, the woman on the magazine page is paired with a now-figurative element on the left – crushed paper and metal that take on new life as a helmet form. Agematsu has exhibited his work at venues worldwide, including the Whitney Museum and the New Museum.