Richard Tuttle: The Critical Edge

Ragged exhibition at Pace London of new textile work by Richard Tuttle.

I’ll admit I didn’t get these works! On first glance they looked like poorly finished applique patchwork. I had a desperate need to take them down and finish off the edging properly! I guess part of the artistic point is in the finish but I found no explanation of it and for me it distracted from any image or idea they were trying to put across.

Reading the commentary it says they are looking at “materiality, space, and three-dimensionality” and are geometric abstract works. I guess they did challenge the idea of works hung an walls having to be paintings but I feel that art needs to have either meaning or beauty or craft and I’m afraid for me these had none of those.

I did however like the prose poem by Tuttle which was handed out with the list of works entitled “What beauty means to me”. It might be a nice idea for an installation to have this read out in the space with the textile in. A pointer to how it relates to these particular works might have helped my understanding of them. 

Closes on 13 May 2017

 

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