A Closer Look: Repeater by Amber Tutwiler
/Each exhibition, we approach our ‘Gallery Insider’ newsletter as an opportunity to take a closer look at a few of the works on view. However, with our current exhibition, Repeater, a solo show of paintings by Amber Tutwiler, we’ve taken a different approach and chosen to highlight the exhibition’s more silent partner - a piece of writing. Tutwiler shares, “Just as the folds of fabric rhythmically dance through each frame, the titles of each work, when read from left to right, act as poetic substrates to the body of work as a whole”.
In our artist talk with Tutwiler last month, she discussed the importance of writing within her artistic practice. If you missed the talk, you can still view it here. Tutwiler notes that the folds of fabric presented in the series are often the same exact folds repeated throughout, visually referencing the psychological phenomenon, Semantic Satiation, in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds. In this way, language and imagery bear equal weight within Repeater.
We invite you to experience this body of work through a new lens as each painting becomes a line of prose with subtle gestures rhythmically echoing each other back and fourth.
They say (go ahead),
Follow, repeater.
This belly traces time
In slow motion.
Cue the curtain,
Return the island,
With it closed,
We see the other side of the desert.
Planes and glass,
A performance, a mirage.
So many gaps,
No shadow can doubt, We must be
Too close.
The inevitability of the ghost,
Of us, etc.
Sleep myself a love to calm.