In her paintings and scanned images Alice Tippit is concerned with breaking down the hierarchical
relationships in assumed meanings. Her paintings have the visual clarity of signs, yet they are
inscrutable: clear and authoritative in appearance but ambiguous in their content. The scanned
images, taken directly from books, photographs, and ephemera, approach the assumed taxonomical
pairings of information. In her work, relationships are created by treating language and images not as
easily sorted and coded units, but as conversations, disrupting the capacity to recognize, identify
and categorize information based on previous connotations. In 'On Defense,' Tippit complicates the
exchanges by situating her work around a painting by her grandmother.
"An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into
the serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your pier-glass or extensive
surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously
scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and
lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that
little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially and it is only your
candle which produces the flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with an
exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable. The scratches are events, and the candle
is the egoism of any person now absent." -- George Eliot, Middlemarch
Alice Tippit lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. Her work has been shown at the Sullivan
Galleries in Chicago, and at Gallery 4 Culture in Seattle among other venues. Tippit received
her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009.
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PEREGRINEPROGRAM is pleased to present Alice Tippit's 'On Defense' from Sep 9-30, 2010.
An opening reception will be held Thursday, Sep 9, from 7-9 p.m.