Really abstract

Geoff Tuttle is a Sacramento mixed-media artist best known for his installations and work as set designer on the cult indie film The American Astronaut. His most recent show, Projector, at Block gallery in downtown Sacramento, explores how we view reality and, according to Tuttle, whether “separation allows an abstraction of reality that perpetuates itself.”

So, needless to say, identity plays a dynamic role in much of Tuttle’s work, which specifically explores how we become removed from the reality of human character. “Since being in Sacramento for five years, I’ve made some of what I consider my most successful works in that I’ve been able to fully implement the language that much of my prior work has been formulating,” Tuttle says. For example, the installation this month at Block, which looks at war, is an instrument that monitors a B-52 as it makes endless bombing runs. The device is in a sparse lab setting, which sits adjacent to a sealed-off room where something more “real” allegedly is taking place. The juxtaposition of a central commandlike environment and this unknown milieu questions our own social constructs, namely, that we have little control over our lives, what we produce and the automation of our society.