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Reality & IllusionRichard Tuttle
Artist Richard Tuttle installs the work Ten Kinds of Memory and Memory Itself (1973) at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
More information and creditsCredits
Producer: Wesley Miller and Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera & Sound: Sam Henriques and Merce Williams. Editor: Jenny Chiurco. Artwork Courtesy: Richard Tuttle. Special Thanks: The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
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Even when considering his three-dimensional works, Richard Tuttle commonly refers to his art as drawing rather than sculpture—the distinction emphasizing the diminutive scale and idea-based nature of his work. Influenced by calligraphy, architecture, and poetry, he subverts the conventions of modernist sculptural practice by creating small, eccentrically playful objects in humble, fragile materials. Tuttle also manipulates the space in which his objects exist, placing them unnaturally high or oddly low on a wall—forcing viewers to reconsider and renegotiate the white-cube gallery space in relation to their own bodies.
“A lot of my work is about not being able to do something well. It tries to locate itself in a place where appreciation of craft is not necessarily part of the appreciation of the piece.”
Richard Tuttle
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Richard Tuttle