related artist
related exhibition

Hints of Surrealism flit through Richard Tuttle’s handsome and lovingly assembled small relief sculptures at Sperone Westwater. But Minimalism is the touchstone, as it has been throughout this 66-year-old artist’s long, distinguished career as an improvisational objectmaker. In July 2005 he was honored with a retrospective that toured nationally. There is a poetic vision running through the present show, resulting in artworks that look both beautiful and intriguing. Each construction is made from simple materials (typically paper, plastic, wood, wire, foil, paint, pencil) and affixed to the wall with a miniature brace that projects it forward. From a distance the sculptures seem to be floating, like pieces of space debris. Up close you are reminded of the unstable scaffoldings of Picasso’s object constructions and papiers collés (collages of pasted paper) and the delicate wood relief sculptures of Hans Arp. A consistent, individual technique links the approximately 60 works here: geometric shapes are cut from paper, folded in unusual ways, painted and then combined intuitively with other elements to create objects governed only by the limits of the artist’s imagination. Neither labored nor facile, their grace, humility and dainty-poetic detail elicit depths of pleasure from the viewer. This is an inspiring, memorable show.

- Benjamin Genocchio