Alex Chitty: Figs break open of themselves

Alex Chitty produced this series of wall-based sculptures and photographs over the course of two years—the two extraordinary years of Covid disruption, to be specific. With an unusually long, generative period of close looking and unhurried experimentation, she was able to develop the pieces presented here as a single, ongoing body of work. 

Chitty has long engaged with aesthetic and material elements of the domestic, which she reflects on here as a site of gathering and conversing, of transmitting knowledge, of sharing pleasure and pain, and of cultivating the new. These activities play out slowly over time and across various scenes of everyday life, experiences that she suggests through strategies of repetition and iteration—stacks of bowls and pistachio shells; shelves, windows, grids, and slats; the flat circles of a drink trays and the dense orbs of fruits and nuts. 

By refiguring the stuff of the household, from its wood and metal bones to bits of interior decor, Chitty initiates a quietly radical opening for imagining what else might be possible beyond the prescribed configurations of our physical existence.

— Anna Searle Jones 

ALEX CHITTY (b. 1979, Miami, FL) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago. Chitty received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Smith College (MA) and a Master in Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Recent exhibitions include: Figs break open of themselves (2022), PATRON, Chicago, IL; Both And (2021), Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Chicago, IL; State of the Art II (2020), Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AK; Becoming the Breeze: Alex Chitty with Alexander Calder (2019), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; pulling flavor from the dirt (2018), PATRON, Chicago, IL;  After (the sun-drenched neutral that goes with everything) (2018), The Anderson Gallery, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA; Living Architecture (2020), 6018 North, Chicago, ILThey bloom without you (2017), Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst IL; Small Sculpture (2017), Corbett Vs. Dempsey, Chicago, IL;  Stranger Things (2017), DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL; Objectifying the Photograph (2017), NIU Art Museum, DeKalb, IL; slight pitch (2016) at LUCE in Turin, Italy, the sun-drenched neutral that goes with everything (2016)  at PATRON in Chicago, IL; Turning Spoons into Forks (2016) at Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, IL; Alex Chitty and Chris Bradley (2015) at Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago, IL; Orchid (2014) at ADDS DONNA in Chicago, IL; The Way They Wanted to Sleep (2013) at Andrew Rafacz Gallery in Chicago, IL; Alex Chitty: Recent Work (2013) at Corbett vs. Dempsey in Chicago, IL. Her work has also been in group exhibitions including: Theory of Forms  (2015) at PATRON, Chicago, IL; Almost Ergonomic (2014) at Studio 424, Chicago, IL; Codification(2014) at LVL3, Chicago, IL; and Ella Hatchet (2013) at Roots and Culture, Chicago, IL.

Image: ALEX CHITTY, Beautiful and menacing and slightly out of my control, 2022, Cherry wood, cotton webbing, carved wooden bananas, melted plastic cups, and powder coated steel, 26 1/4" x 24 1/2" x 4" | 67 x 62.2 x 10.1 cm