Presently on show at PaceWildenstein (534 W 25th st) is Richard Tuttle’s first solo show at the gallery. The exhibition includes twelve new works that were executed in 2008. All twelve pieces, measuring roughly 1’ x 10’, are made up of two rectangles of dyed fabric cloth with sown in grommets, allowing each piece to hang on nails. For Tuttle, these latest additions to his oeuvre alleviate the ambiguity of dichotomy and of the abstract and the real and instead make manifest the prospect of harmony and a new beginning. The works are paired with a DVD, showing a conversation between Tuttle and Arne Glimcher, director and founder of Pace Art Gallery in New York.
PaceWildenstein
Richard Tuttle: Walking on Air
534 W 25th st
March 20 – April 25, 2009
RELATED LINKS
Exhibition Page and Press Release [PaceWildenstein]
Richard Tuttle Info, Bio, Essays and More [Sperone Westwater]
Biography, Interviews and Multimedia on Richard Tuttle [PBS art:21]
Richard Tuttle: Never Not an Artist (2005). Documentary on Richard Tuttle directed by Chris Maybach [Art City]
‘Walking on Air’ is emblematic of the nature of Tuttle’s practice.  Tuttle defies the machismo of modernist sculptural practice by fabricating artworks that are humble, yet playful, in size and material. For example, the use of materials such as cloth, paper and wire typify the Paper Octagonals series of 1970. Tuttle also includes light and shadow in his objects, thereby even venturing beyond the material. His practice is characterized further by the preference for unconventional hanging. In his 1975 Wood Slats, for example, works were hung right below eye level, triggering a different kind of physical interaction between the work, the viewer and the gallery space.
Richard Tuttle was born in 1941 in New Jersey and currently works from New York and New Mexico. In 1963, he received his BA from Trinity College, Connecticut. Tuttle had his first solo exhibition at Betty Parsons Gallery in 1965. An international career of numerous exhibitions, both solo and group, publications and awards was to follow. In 2005, SFMoMA organized Tuttle’s retrospective and a year after, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate Degree of Fine Arts by the California College of the Arts. This month, Tuttle spoke at the opening of the exhibition of Miami Art Museum’s most recent acquisitions and he contributed to the Menil/Rice Lecture Series organized by the Department of Art History of Rice University, Texas.
By Gabriëlle for Art Observed
