Richard Tuttle “basis, 70s Drawings”

Pace Gallery (540 W 25th St.)

This event has ended.

3rd Floor

Richard Tuttle, basis, 70s Drawings will feature a total of ninety-three drawings by the pioneering conceptual artist Richard Tuttle. Split into two bodies of work from the early to late 1970s, the exhibition reflects a period of enormous change in the art world, which was being redefined by artists like Tuttle, whose practice embraced the experiential qualities of art and blurred the lines between mediums. This exhibition offers a unique glimpse into the formative years of Tuttle’s groundbreaking creative process, which elevated the medium of drawing by placing it on the same stage as painting and sculpture. Presented together for the first time, these works are visual thoughts and poems that resonate the youthfulness and innovative period of when they were made, while simultaneously opening new doors for reinterpretations and ideas about art, philosophy, and life.

Richard Tuttle (American, b. 1941, Rahway, New Jersey) has revolutionized the landscape of contemporary art, challenging rules and notions of genre and media. His work exceeds rational determinations, sensitizing viewers to perception and the unconscious, and engages aspects of painting, drawing, sculpture, bookmaking, printmaking, and installation.

Tuttle’s engagement with scale, light, and systems of display have endured throughout his oeuvre and can be seen in his attention to marginal spaces such as floors, corners, and over door frames. Rejecting the rationality and precision of Minimalism, Tuttle embraced a handmade quality and the invention of forms that emphasize the occupation of these space along with volume. Over the course of his career, he has continued to overturn traditional constraints of material, medium, and method that engages a variety of traditional and non-traditional processes such as in his wire, small-scale collage, dyed cloth, and octagonal pieces.Richard Tuttle draws beauty and poetry out of humble materials, creating works that exist in the present moment, reflect the fragility of the world, and allow for individual experiences of perception.