Alex Chitty & Alice Tippit

If you wrap foil tightly around an orange and later remove the orange, the foil holds a structural memory of the now absent orange. Looking into the hollow chamber of the foil, you can imagine what is not there (the orange) by looking closely at what actually is (the crumpled foil). This basic idea points to some of the varied phenomena that Alex Chitty investigates in her work: mistranslation, perception, the representational versus the abstract, and how what we know influences what we see and do not see.

In Alice Tippit’s paintings and works on paper she employs a graphic, hard edged style and restrained color palette, using simple, recognizable yet relatively neutral shapes. The resulting images function as signs in which the interaction of form and color produce visual relationships that seem to project specificity while remaining ambiguous enough to allow interpretation and inquiry. In this manner Tippit addresses her interest in how the language of painting operates and creates meaning.

Alex Chitty (b.1979) lives and works in Chicago, IL. Chitty received her B.A. from Smith College in 2001 and her M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008. Recent exhibitions include The Way They Wanted to Sleep at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Recent Work at Corbett vs. Dempsey in Chicago; Platonic Year at Alderman Exhibitions in Chicago; and Big Youth II at Bourouri Gallery in Berlin, Germany.

Alice Tippit (b. 1975) lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. She received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in May, 2013. She has had solo exhibitions at Jancar Jones Gallery in Los Angeles, Important Projects in San Francisco, and at PEREGRINEPROGRAM in Chicago.