Expectation and Dual States

There presently are a number of Richard Tuttle drawings, with poetic names, on display as a grouping in the Prints & Drawing area of the Art Institute. Each is a single colored shape (some more solid, some more feeble than others) that charges the negative white space of the paper. In some, the wrinkling of the paper bends to the presence of the shape. In others, it doesn't. The white space activates the positive shape too, but to a degree -- to my eye -- less so in most of them. The form of the shapes generally are the bit I remember visually, not the shape of the white space. No doubt, the expectation of object connected to the positive shape plays a role in the forms that the brain stores.

There is both truth and deception in the obvious, at once focal point and distraction. Dual states with no emphasis on either state displace the obvious and disrupt expectations.