Frederic Tuten: Memory in Fragments
Harper鈥檚 is pleased to announce Memory in Fragments, New York-based artist and writer Frederic Tuten鈥檚 third solo exhibition with the gallery. The presentation features Tuten鈥檚 new paintings on canvas and opens April 19, 4鈥�6pm, with a reception attended by the artist.
Much like his writing, Tuten鈥檚 visual work foregrounds assemblage, fragmented forms, and vivid color, where imagery collides in a dialogue of abstraction and narrative suggestion. His novels, short stories, and essays unravel like intricate collages鈥攕ampling and reanimating history and myth. He has left an indelible mark on the history of experimental American fiction with his imagist style and nonlinear structures. Seminal works like The Adventures of Mao on the Long March (1971) and Tintin in the New World: A Romance (1993) teem with figurative language鈥攁ll reflected in his studio practice.
Paintings like El Sombrero Escapado hum with energy, their fractured compositions a collision of ideographs, objects, and heads that seem to whisper secrets from a half-remembered dream. A kaleidoscope of primary colors bursts across the work鈥攙ivid blues pressing against feverish reds, while black fissures crack through the tableau like fault lines in memory. A red hat, a green vessel, an inky silhouette鈥攖heir interaction beckons yet refuses resolution, existing in an intermediary space between abstraction and figuration.
Avant la r茅volution also brims with restless movement. Here, Tuten partitions the canvas with narrative scenes that seem to draw from life. In a Matisse-inspired green room, a bouquet of flowers juts from a vase, their whimsical buds reaching for an avalanche of floating shapes high above. These amorphous forms appear watchful as they drift like wavering clouds. The artist carves out each vignette with jagged lines and impassioned strokes, creating a composition that ebbs and flows with dynamic, bustling energy.
Ultimately, Tuten鈥檚 latest body of work, Memory in Fragments, lingers between remembrance and invention, where hints of the tangible world live in a fantastical dream. His paintings, like his fiction, embrace contradiction鈥攐rder and chaos, precision and abandon, the familiar and the yet-to-be-seen.
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Harper鈥檚 is pleased to announce Memory in Fragments, New York-based artist and writer Frederic Tuten鈥檚 third solo exhibition with the gallery. The presentation features Tuten鈥檚 new paintings on canvas and opens April 19, 4鈥�6pm, with a reception attended by the artist.
Much like his writing, Tuten鈥檚 visual work foregrounds assemblage, fragmented forms, and vivid color, where imagery collides in a dialogue of abstraction and narrative suggestion. His novels, short stories, and essays unravel like intricate collages鈥攕ampling and reanimating history and myth. He has left an indelible mark on the history of experimental American fiction with his imagist style and nonlinear structures. Seminal works like The Adventures of Mao on the Long March (1971) and Tintin in the New World: A Romance (1993) teem with figurative language鈥攁ll reflected in his studio practice.
Paintings like El Sombrero Escapado hum with energy, their fractured compositions a collision of ideographs, objects, and heads that seem to whisper secrets from a half-remembered dream. A kaleidoscope of primary colors bursts across the work鈥攙ivid blues pressing against feverish reds, while black fissures crack through the tableau like fault lines in memory. A red hat, a green vessel, an inky silhouette鈥攖heir interaction beckons yet refuses resolution, existing in an intermediary space between abstraction and figuration.
Avant la r茅volution also brims with restless movement. Here, Tuten partitions the canvas with narrative scenes that seem to draw from life. In a Matisse-inspired green room, a bouquet of flowers juts from a vase, their whimsical buds reaching for an avalanche of floating shapes high above. These amorphous forms appear watchful as they drift like wavering clouds. The artist carves out each vignette with jagged lines and impassioned strokes, creating a composition that ebbs and flows with dynamic, bustling energy.
Ultimately, Tuten鈥檚 latest body of work, Memory in Fragments, lingers between remembrance and invention, where hints of the tangible world live in a fantastical dream. His paintings, like his fiction, embrace contradiction鈥攐rder and chaos, precision and abandon, the familiar and the yet-to-be-seen.
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