Richard Tuttle

This show is a puzzle. That's to say, even by the usual standards of Richard Tuttle's enigmatic, postminimalist style, these current works seem particularly provocative, their two long, horizontal strips of tie-dyed cloth suggesting a kind of riddle to be deciphered, a challenge to discern the rationale behind each pair of patterns.

Sometimes the basis seems to be simple similarity of colour-scheme, such as the only two blue-and-orange compositions positioned together. Sometimes it's the contiguity of tie-dyed shapes - the way a fuzzy band of red seems to lead into the purple of the cotton above, for example. Sometimes it's a relationship of contrast, such as the organic, marbled swirl of blues and browns versus the industrialised, mechanized mark left by an electrical iron. Plus, of course, there are the times when you can't work out any correspondence, and you wonder if it's all simply a case of projecting things on to the works, and so the only thing to do is simply enjoy them as a kind of beautiful, hippyfied, colourfield painting.

Actually, though, they're not really paintings at all, but sculptures - up close you notice patterns of folds and creases, and a stitched seam running along the lower edge of each work: a unifying motif, an equivalent horizon-line, that links all the works together, even as their individual differences segregate them.

For that's ultimately what these works are about: by demonstrating how the basic building blocks of colour, form and shape can create distinctions and associations, they become emblems - flags, perhaps - of the artistic process itself. And as such, they lead to another puzzle: with work this good, this cogent and concise, how come it's been almost 15 years since Tuttle's last exhibition in this country?