Tomio Koyama Gallery Kyobashi is pleased to present “San, Shi, Go,” an exhibition by Richard Tuttle. Now 83 years old, Tuttle is one of the most important contemporary artists of our time. He has built a career spanning some 60 years and continues to work with a radical spirit of inquiry.
This exhibition will be the artist’s fifth solo exhibition at our gallery and his first in seven years, featuring his latest works.
【About Richard Tuttle and his works】
Richard Tuttle (1941-) currently lives and works in New York and New Mexico.
His early representative works include Cloth Piece, in which he cut up a canvas and displayed it on the wall as if he were dismantling a painting, and Wire Piece, which is composed of wires, their shadows, and drawn lines. His free mode of artistic expression that transcends the genres of drawing, painting, and sculpture has constantly provided fresh stimuli to the art scene, exerting a considerable influence on the next generation.
As the artist himself says, “It is the invisible that is most interesting.”*1 Tuttle’s works are a fusion of philosophy, materials, colors, language, and spirituality that persistently confronts the nature of the world and the self.
Tuttle’s work is distinctive for how he creates various nuances of color, line, twist, wrinkle, texture, and shadow in everyday materials in order to evoke the unseen fluidity and energy of the artist’s movements, thoughts, creative process, and passage of time. The way that viewers perceive the work changes depending on where they stand, creating a multilayered, lightweight kind of power and presence that seems to also capture the emotions of the viewer.
The exhibition itself and the words might also be said to be part of Tuttle’s important works. At his last solo exhibition in Roppongi, he printed the titles of his works on paper, placed these sheets of paper on the floor, and taped them there, making them appear as if they coexisted with the works as a kind of autonomous language. Tuttle’s view of the world seems to reveal the rich, fertile flows that exist between the diversity of different categories that typically escape our notice
“In any art form, there has to be an accounting of its opposite condition.You’re going to be a visual artist, then there has to be something in it that accounts for the possibility of the invisible, the opposite of the visual experience.”*1
See the following link for more details including Richard Tuttle’s past exhibitions.
https://tomiokoyamagallery.com/artists/richard-tuttle/
【About the exhibition “San, Shi, Go” and Tuttle’s new works】
The new works in this exhibition are three-dimensional works that articulate various thought processes about numbers, concepts, colors, and the invisible, all of which Tuttle has an abiding interest in, expressed through a lighthearted, rich worldview using everyday materials such as wood, paper, cloth, wire, plastic, and styrofoam.
“With numbers, the West writes “one” with a vertical line, and the East with a horizontal line. When young, I was happy to learn this, even though asking, why are these methods opposite? Now I can ask, beg and plead with the world, how do I write “one?””
“There are various colors that interpenetrate numbers and concept. They are striations laid down by something that must have something to do with the structure that holds concept apart from things.”
(From an email and text by Richard Tuttle on the occasion of this exhibition *2)
Many of the works in this exhibition make use of wood, and Tuttle himself also makes reference to this.
“I have been wondering why I use wood. I used to think, wood is about morality. Whenever you see wood used in houses, it gives a sense of moral strength. I did not like this, because I wanted art to be free of morality. Now, I am interested. Why are we moral? Maybe, KAZU, among other things, examines this? We will have to wait to see the exhibition, what happens, for the works, 1 – 24, certainly develop and grow, just like numbers.”
Tuttle contributed the following poem to this exhibition.
Tuttle continues to probe and question various issues through his work. This exhibition promises us the pleasure of spending time in the company of his work, and of vicariously experiencing the discovery of everything unexpected and interesting in each and every moment of this world. We hope you will join us in this experience of Richard Tuttle’s new worldview.
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There are things
You can’t count
Angels are
among them
The numbers
used to count
are numbers
to count things
The numbers
Of San, Shi,
Go are to
count angels
Numbers are
Valua
Ble to us
How do you
Count the way
You feel when
The sun strikes
Air you breathe
Or know by
Memory
Of the last
Breath you took?
As colors
rush from con
cept to num
ber and back
Sepera
tion leaves con
cept and num
ber the same
It is won
derful to
see color
made in the
mind. Is it
more, when a
number hides
in concept,
or concept
spills into
number by
numbering?
Will Japan
tell us this
secret and
fact of life?
In color
word becomes
nonsense un
til substance,
has it right
from the bot
tom of form
that’s number.
We wish a num
ber were elas
tic and under
watch completed
These qualities
are character
istic and plen
tious to both
number and con
cept though short on
proximity
as controlling
One can say
easily
one is tak
ing on too
much though phi
losophy
is a pic
ture itself
Many years I
thought my thoughts
waiting to come
to Japan
Hoping to find
the truth. In
stead I threw
them all out.
That felt like
the truth and
empty was
a relief.
If Western The concept
philoso for one must
phy is based be opo
on polar site of one
Ities why What is opo
shouldn’t I site of one
be inpir except one
ed by non- How to make
Polari philoso
ties of con phy without
cept and num polari
ber and learn ties for it
Salt is thrown
I’m in a
kettle and
you. Bathroom
Heidegger
poetry
of philo
sophy. Speech
He talks with
Kyoto school
make meaning.
Mandala
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*1 Richard Tuttle in “Structures” – Season 3 – “Art in the Twenty-First Century” | Art21, 2024
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For press inquiries, please contact: press@tomiokoyamagallery.com (Makiko Okado)
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