18 Nov 2010

Richard Tuttle: Triumphs at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane

Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane is believed to be one of the oldest public galleries of modern art in the western world. The collector and dealer Hugh Lane established the Gallery in 1908. Originally known as The Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, (for which the poet William Butler Yeats wrote the famous poem The Municipal Gallery Revisited, 1937) its support of contemporary art practice is based on the ethos of Hugh Lane: 'For it is one's contemporaries that teach one the most'.

Home to Francis Bacon's studio and archive of over 7,000 items, the Gallery's collection spans from the age of modernism to contemporary practice, with works by Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Georges Rouault, John Butler Yeats, through to Francis Bacon, Sean Scully, Agnes Martin, Gerald Byrne, Tacita Dean, Dorothy Cross, Seán Shanahan and Isobel Nolan.

Today The Hugh Lane houses the foremost collection of modern and contemporary art in Ireland. Furthermore the Gallery is noted for its international schedule of temporary exhibitions.

'Richard Tuttle: Triumphs' at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane is a site specific exhibition and collaboration with the artist. Responding to the local as encountered in the early Georgian architecture of the main gallery, Charlemont House (designed by Sir William Chambers in 1765) and to the Hugh Lane collection (established in 1908), Richard Tuttle will install a multipart horizontal installation in the galley's new wing (2006). In works such as the shaped plywood wall reliefs of the 1990s to recent handmade printed paper assemblages, Richard Tuttle will configure his artworks in new forms that have emblematic meaning to his interest in the Augustan era and its polysemous aesthetics.

Neo classicism, the governance of imperial states and the power of the visual to silence language is revealed in 'Triumphs'. Richard Tuttle's reputation as one of the leading post minimalist artists rests on his persistently unconstrained art practice using improvisational working procedures and non-traditional materials. The multiplicity of concepts is successfully realised through work that uses a paucity of means but which has a robust and enriching impact on the viewer.

An overlapping 'Triumph' curated by Barbara Dawson and Michael Dempsey, illuminates the main exhibition. It begins with work from the mid 1960s through to the present, and includes a new installation of 'Village V' (2004) in Lord Charlemont's salon. Richard Tuttle Books – curated by Logan Sisley – reveals a significant activity for Richard Tuttle which will also be included in the exhibition.

Richard Tuttle: Artist's Talk, 1pm, Friday 19 November 2010