PRESS RELEASE
Richard Tuttle
12 January – 16 February 2001
Artist reception: Friday, 12 January, 6 to 8 pm
Anthony Meier Fine Arts is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition of new work by New York artist Richard Tuttle. Exhibiting for the first time in 1965, Tuttle has remained at the forefront of contemporary art for the past four decades, recently being included in the 1999 Whitney Biennial.
Throughout his career, the aspect that joins together almost all of Tuttle’s work is form. Classified early on as an “Antiformist”, Tuttle’s work may be anti-materialistic, almost off-hand, but the form has always been of substance. The form itself is critical to the way the work activates the space around it and sticks permanently in the mind. Tuttle’s pieces are characterized by a certain simplicity; they are about seeing rather than looking, thinking rather than analyzing.
Tuttle’s success as an artist has been realized in the various mediums he has mastered. Three distinct but related series of works will be exhibited at the gallery: a set of prints recently completed at Crown Point Press, a group of works from the Silk series, and the final group of ten of the Summer Pieces.
The prints were completed over a three-year period of repeated visits to Crown Point Press. Related to the Silk series and Summer Pieces, color and form have a dominant position. Silk, a series of thinly painted acrylic on fir pieces, is a series in two parts. The series encompasses two types of work, distinguished not by content, small groupings of colorful geometric figures against a neutral back, but by placement on the wall. The Summer Pieces are also multi-fold works. Consisting of four sets of ten pieces, all hung on the wall, the first set of the Summer Pieces is a group of constructions, whereas the second, third and fourth sets are more in line with paintings on wood.
All of the works exhibited at the gallery demonstrate Tuttle’s mastery and range as well as his unique vision of form and color.