Richard Tuttle: Small Sculptures of the 1970s

Modern Art presents a solo exhibition of historical work by Richard Tuttle. This is the artist’s seventh exhibition with the gallery.

Small Sculptures of the 1970s brings together a substantial body of work that Tuttle made in New York towards the end of a five-year period during which his practice underwent a decisive shift towards greater material and formal reduction. This body of work has remained largely unseen for several decades.

For over sixty years, Richard Tuttle’s work has comprised radically minimal gestures made through the barest of means, reshaping the ways painting, sculpture, drawing and poetry are conceived. This exhibition centres hand-sized, roughly hewn assemblages constructed from everyday materials. In one work, a single length of painted wire delicately delineates a volume of space; in others jigsaw-cut timber or plywood slats both collapse and construct new spatial forms. Each work discovers its own internal measure, balancing resolve with openness and instinctiveness. As Tuttle observed, “The work rests at the unconscious level. Bringing it to the conscious level is like resisting its own will.”

These works emerged at a moment when American Minimalism was increasingly defined by large-scale, industrially fabricated objects. Tuttle instead foregrounded what might otherwise be overlooked or undervalued, adopting a distinctly intuitive approach shaped by the world around him. Throughout his career, Tuttle has responded closely to the gallery environment, creating works that convey a profound sense of physical vulnerability that challenges prevailing assumptions about spectacle, material authority and permanence. As Tuttle has stated, “People like something that lasts; I like something that vanishes.”