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MARTHA TUTTLE Metaxu

On View
Tilton Gallery
January 7 – February 20, 2016
New York

Edges travel with elation. Lines sag.
                                                                 Wrinkles recall sages
Eager to impart wisdom to the troubled world.

                                              Clear Sound (1) is talking to Cold Water (1).
                                    Their textures oblige the absorbent air.
                         Measuring space on all sides
             The constituent elements are remote,
Instantaneously made familiar
                                                                  And the familiar, intrinsic.

The Rupture Drawings welcome their living precedents
(The natural chain of consequence.)
To anticipate a conjoining of faith and reason,
As the sun continues to blaze over dry land.

Who would forget the immense difference between indigo,
Clay, and iron. And woad, clay, and iron!
Burgundy, maroon, friendly chocolate from Tunisia,
There, no one irons their clothes.
Not even before the shrines in Sufetula.

                                                                 Burnt edges and punctured holes
Stretch the form to find unpredictable coteries of tempo,
Circulation that moves the lines to breathe, sing, and dance.
Clear Sound (2) and (3) are too vivacious to claim
                                                                 Certain degrees of calmness, she admits.

Fundamental divisions, palatial folds, mellowed contradistinctions
           Shades of indigo migrate outward;
                     Combined bodies of woad and iron,
                                 Rest! Look! Looking with rest.

The imperceptible grid is there, proud of its broken rhythm.
        A series of dances consists of six petite torsos, ever discrete,
                 Left to right! Right to left!
                       There they are, Pines and Plovers, undoubtedly
                               A reincarnation of Diotima and Simone Weil,
                                     Patrons of the in-between world,
                                              Where becoming and being are a perpetual condition.

 

 

Martha Tuttle, Clear Sound (2), 2015. Wool, steel, rust, silk, indigo, woad, clay, iron, and paper, 22 × 20 inches. Courtesy Tilton Gallery.

 

 

Contributor

Phong Bui

Phong H. Bui is the Publisher and Artistic Director of the Brooklyn Rail.

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The Brooklyn Rail

FEB 2016

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