Richard Tuttle TheStars
A small-format artist’s book with a softcover and red dust jacket produced to accompany an exhibition by Richard Tuttle at the London gallery Modern Art engages with the works in a highly empathetic manner by means of minimalist design decisions. The artist presented nearly 100 small sculptures made from everyday materials and refuse such as wire, paper and pieces of wood, each displayed individually on small wall-mounted shelves made of white-painted wood. All the sculptures were photographed front-on in identical fashion, and in the book the full-bleed photos are always placed on a right-hand page. The accompanying left-hand pages feature captions of the works at top left in a relatively large, unusual silver grotesque typeface. Four-page sections of a thinner, grey, semi-transparent paper are bound in at regular intervals, containing poems by the artist in a two-column layout in the same typeface and size, but this time in red. The white spine, which is concealed beneath the folded dust jacket, bears the book’s title handwritten by the artist. This gesture is a nod to the manuscript work titles that Tuttle applied to the front of the white wooden shelves during the exhibition, and it underscores the close collaboration with the designer. The overall effect is subtle and refined.
