Art Basel OVR: Miami Beach

Throughout his work, Richard Tuttle (b.1941, Rahway, NJ) overturns traditional constraints of material and medium. In this new body of work ‘Stories, I-XX’ the artist elaborates on his displacement of paintinginto other realms to engage us in a rhythmical and phenomenologicalreflection on colour. Using various aspects of painting in a freehandedway his work exceeds rational determinations and occupies a liminalspace in-between mediums. As we move from one Story to the next, theidiosyncratic nature of these cutout plywood pieces comes to confronttheir seriality–form and logic sporadically emerge and disappear.

During the 1980s, Richard Tuttle began experimenting with materials and framing devices to probe art’s relationship to scale, form and systems of display. Diverting from the cold precision of Minimalism and theendgame logic of late modernism, his approach to art making embracesa playful and handmade quality that promotes the idea that things arealways ‘just beginning.’ Often made out of humble materials such asplywood, cardboard, Styrofoam and paper, his work pushes the viewerto find forms of appreciation that aren’t related to craftsmanship. In hisown words, Tuttle proclaims that he at once loves materials, and is alsonot really interested in them. The subtlety of this paradigm exemplifieshis attitude towards art as a tool for life and his interest in exploringwhat he describes as ‘the art of making art.’–an activity of sublimation engrossed in language and story telling.