Richard Tuttle at Galerie Lelong with his new exhibition “My Best”

Galerie Lelong and its director Jean Frémon have long lasting relationships with their artists and when Richard Tuttle 82,  mentioned that they had worked together for sixteen years, you could feel a true friendship between them. The artist, who shares his life between the desert in New Mexico and Mount Desert Island in Maine, shows 26 new works “My Best” which he calls his “flotilla”. They all carry a letter of the alphabet and some of them have an aquatic feel. They are abstract pieces on wood with a little color. In the Matignon gallery, Cameroun artist Barthélémy Toguo, shows spectacular blue and white frescoes on the theme of water.

Richard Tuttle, My Best V, 50 000€

Richard Tuttle has an abstract way of talking about his art so it was not always easy to follow him but he is so modest and charming that I tried. He has named each one of his painting with a letter of the alphabet. This one called V reminds me of Venice but it is totally fortuitous. What is important for him is the architecture of the work. He is impressed by Barnett Newman’s verticalism and Mark Rothko’s horizontalism but believes in divided space which Adolph Gottlieb represents best. He talked at length about the space of the gallery which is divided in two. The empty floor is “the desert” and his horizontal wooden paintings are in a similar format as the beautiful painting by Filippo Lippi he saw at Musée Condé in Chantilly last Wednesday. He believes in artists inheriting from other artists.

Richard Tuttle, My Best P, 2022 at Galerie Lelong

The other show of the gallery on avenue Matignon is very different but the artist Barthélémy Toguo (B. 1967), presented his work  “Water is right” with great passion. It is his 6 th show at the gallery and he has just been awarded the Armory Show Pommery Prize for his installation “Urban Requiem”.  The largest piece “Water matters” with 200 engraved bottles and a large blue pastel fresco had already been presented at Musée du quai Branly two years ago but it is so spectacular that I was happy to see it again. You can see it from the street even at night if you walk by it.

Bathélémy Toguo, “Water is right” at 38 avenue Matignon

The different paintings on the theme of water hang on a wall covered in pastel drawings by the artist. The effect is beautiful. When he was little in Cameroon, he had to go and get water at the well before walking to school and transported it in multicolor pans and buckets. He often thinks of this scene since he has been living in France and  works on the world problem of water since he moved to France. The whole gallery is transformed in an aquatic environment in deep blues, quite magical.

The gallery has been changed into an aquarium

Toguo has also created a foundation in 2013, Bandjoun Station, where artists from the world over come to work with local communities. Last October he had a large sculpture paying a tribute to vanished migrants, under the pyramid of the Louvre. Do not miss these two shows which are on until October 7 at Galerie Lelong.