Tuttle

"If you’re going to be a visual artist, then there has to be something in the work that accounts for the possibility of the invisible, the opposite of the visual experience. That’s why it’s not like a table or a car or something. I think that that might even be hard for people because most of our visual experiences are of tables. It has no business being anything else but a table. But a painting or a sculpture really exists somewhere between itself, what it is, and what it is not- you know, the very thing. And how the artist engineers or manages that is the question."
- Richard Tuttle

Over the past four decades, Richard Tuttle has thrown into question nearly every conceivable artistic convention and critical category to create an enormously inventive body of abstract work--one that embraces and intermingles drawing, painting, collage, book-making, sculpture and design. From his spare yet enigmatic forms to his recent complex installations, Tuttle's primary impetus throughout has been to craft unique objects, using everyday, often ephemeral materials, that demand to be confronted on their own terms. This has earned him standing as one of the most provocative artists. A prolific artist, among his oeuvre his sensitive handling of diverse materials; his lifelong engagement with drawing and its expansion into three-dimensional space; his complex play with the conventions of language; and his innovative artist's books, many of which are collaborations with poets.