American artist Richard Tuttle exhibits new works on paper at Galerie Christian Lethert that are both subtle and vibrant. The artist’s poetic amalgamations of paint and words are presented partly hanging in artist’s frames made of light blue silk and gold leaf, and partly lying on an eight-metre long table.
The exhibition titled »Process of Remembering« is best described in Tuttle’s own words: »One can say I am a visual thinker. The two bodies of work in this exhibition are really one body. If I were a poet, I may say I was trying to define a body, or making a body, from the two, one shown horizontally, unframed, one shown vertically, framed.
The body began with the very small works commencing »Process«. They proceeded getting larger and more and more complex until the last which uses two joined sheets with a brown-painted wooden bar over the join. This bar acts as a frame, a need for a frame, to this extent, and for the purpose of completing the process.
»Remembering« makes us aware of a process normally hidden from us, because it happens so fast. Its structure(s) are extremely beautiful and, once revealed, may be useful to others for all sorts of reasons. They are compounded structures often produced in quiet moments before a memory is formed. They can free us from memory, or make us dependent, whichever we like, because we have a choice, we may not have had before looking at what we are seeing, and seeing a free escape from looking, if we like? This all happens while remembering, something I didn’t know was possible and gives a purpose for work of this kind to share with and communicate with others. This is the kind of pursuit I enjoy and think is valuable.« (Richard Tuttle, October 2023)
In order to meet the specific conditions of the works, the exhibition architecture and presentation was created in close collaboration with the artist. This provides different ways of encountering and accessing the art. The viewer can stand in front of the framed works or lean over the table, which acts as a ›picture carrier‹ and at the same time structures the space and directs movement through it. The process of remembering is complex and seldom linear, which is why the presentation of the two groups of works run in opposite directions. The spiral is the underlying symbol for the intertwining of expansion and contraction, beginning and end, space and time, because ultimately everything is impenetrably interwoven. For the exhibition »Process of Remembering«, Tuttle has created works that exist in the present moment and reflect the fragility and beauty of memory.
