Go See – New York: Richard Tuttle “What’s the Wind” at The Pace Gallery through July 22nd, 2011
July 12th, 2011
Richard Tuttle, System 4, Hummingbird (2011). Via The Pace Gallery
“What’s the Wind,” an exhibition of six large free-standing sculptures by Richard Tuttle, is currently open at The Pace Gallery and will be on view through July 22nd. Tuttle joined Pace in 2007, and this is his second solo exhibition with the gallery. The sculptures currently on view are tied into a theme of systematization, even as they contradict the concept with nature-based subject matter. Works like bumblebee and winter are mechanical even while being inherently simple, thus questioning the concept of what defines a system overall.
More images and text after the jump…
Richard Tuttle, System 1: Cheap Face (2010). Via Whitewall Magazine
Richard Tuttle, detail of System 1: Cheap Face (2010). Via The Pace Gallery
Tuttle describes his new work as being syncretic, with elation and potential for newness and harmony. In a similar contradiction, he finds newness in longevity, and in the timelessness of organic matter. Nature is humbly used to redefine larger philosophical realities in a show that exhibits a duality between modest materials and grand-scale ideology. As Tuttle explained in an interview with WNYC, the title of the exhibition derives from the artist’s musings on East Greek philosophy, whose seminal questions ‘What is fire; what is earth; what is water,’ segues into Tuttle’s exhibition question: “What’s the Wind?” Overall, this most recent show is a culmination of Tuttle’s philosophical musings, alluding almost to a steady end of a career. He told WNYC:
“I really feel for the first time I’ve come close to saying everything I want to say… I found it very very difficult to release works out into the world and now I see that’s because I didn’t feel that’s because I’d said everything wanted to say in those pieces, so I tended to want to hold them back. And now there’s this change. In some ways I always predicted my life work’s would come to fruition in the last segments.”
This 2011 exhibition is only his second since Tuttle began representation with The Pace Gallery, and is reminiscent of his debut show, “Walking on Air,” which ran from March through April in 2009. Although the 12 works created in 2008 were exclusively hanging dyed fabrics, the concept of abstract reinterpretation of the synthetic as natural is reminiscent of his current work. Arguably, the tension of synthetic material in “Walking on Air” directly parallels “What’s the Wind”: the first exhibition used synthetics as nature, and the second uses nature as systems.
Richard Tuttle, System 3: Measurement (2011). Via The Pace Gallery
Richard Tuttle, System 5: Glass Suit (2010). Via Whitewall Magazine
Richard Tuttle has maintained a lengthy albeit hotly disputed career. His 1975 exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art was panned by critics, and allegedly resulted in the firing of then-curator, but it marked major turning point in what ultimately became a high-profile career. His work has been the subject of over 300 solo exhibitions and a major 40-year retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2005, which traveled to five additional museums. Tuttle’s work is housed in more than 50 national public collections, and has been internationally showcased at the Venice Biennale, and twice at Kunsthaus Zug in Switzerland, most recently in 2008. He currently lives and works in both New Mexico and New York City.
-A. Bregman
Related Links
What’s the Wind [The Pace Gallery]
Richard Tuttle [WNYC]
Richard Tuttle at Pace Wildenstein – 2009 [Contemporary Art Daily]
RICHARD TUTTLE Opening Reception at THE PACE GALLERY [Billy Farrell Agency]
Richard Tuttle’s “What’s the Wind” at the Pace Gallery [Whitewall]
