Alice Tippit. Long Red Moans

About

Continuing to explore the interpretations of visual language, Tippit’s latest body of work mines the psychology and susceptibility of reading the erotic in the everyday. 

Tippit’s painting style is graphic—pictures, signs, and symbols are rendered with minimal detailing and a restricted palette. Rife with innuendo, sly humor, and myriad readings, the artist uses areas of monochromatic color to create fluid positive and negative space. The slippage between one visual reading to the next is further complicated by Tippit’s use of titles. Rarely explaining the painting’s content, they instead serve as another subsequent entry point.

Tippit reexamines the ability of objects to eclipse their ordinary or useful associations through a sexualized subtlety that infiltrates her familiar imagery. Flowers bloom, drapes peak open, a claw gapes. Coupled with Tippit’s close crops and unexpected juxtapositions, these objects become catalysts to amplify suggestive readings. There is a constant state of encountering in Tippit’s work—viewing and re-viewing as the erotic takes shape in the mundane, mimicking the push and pull of desire.