This exhibition bought together over 50 pieces drawn from five series of work created between 1994 and 1996, unified in Tuttle’s view by their need to be seen against grey walls.
Richard Tuttle was born in New Jersey, USA, in 1941. His first solo exhibition of painted wooden wall-and-floor-reliefs was in 1965 and over the following decade he was often shown in association with Nauman, Hesse, Serra, Shapiro, Sonnier and other young ‘process’ artists of the time. Tuttle’s constructions are on a small scale and have a sense of impermanence and fragility: his materials are plywood, paper, string, wire, fabric and Styrofoam. The simplicity of his work conveys a determination to eliminate the inessential in order to reveal not only the beauty of the transient and ordinary, but also an underlying order and harmony. In his recent work, Tuttle continues to follow a path of experimentation and investigation, inventing physical forms and a visual language for the un-nameable.
This was Tuttle’s first show in a public space in Britain since 1985 and comes at a point when his work was attracting the attention of younger artists.
