I recently had the great opportunity and pleasure to curate a collaborative project for Unison Home with Chicago artist, Alex Chitty.
Audrey Keiffer, one of the brilliant minds behind The Patternbase, wrote the following, thoughtful review of Alex Chitty + Unison for New City Design:
Alex Chitty activates the store windows at Wicker Park’s Unison
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Unison, a home décor store in Wicker Park, stocks bold pieces for the kitchen, bath, living room and bedroom. The store is known for collaborating with artists such as Hillery Sproatt for a classic black-and-white tribal pattern and Alex Fuller for a Bauhaus-inspired Alphablocks pattern. The latest collaboration is with Chicago artist Alex Chitty. Conceived as an experimental exhibition, the work takes existing items in the store and reimagines them in photographs. Chitty interacts with the entirety of the retail space, creating an installation that disrupts, but doesn’t detract from, the clean showroom.
Unison’s aesthetic is about clean poppy red and black dot patterns, contrasting black-and-white abstract pieces and bold geometrics. Along with a Bauhaus feel, much of the store’s design is reminiscent of lively Marimekko fabrics. Chitty’s installation connects with the mood of the store, but updates a color scheme of muted grays, creams and mauves that differ from the predominant bright blues, yellows and reds.
For the installation, Chitty transformed objects from the store’s collection with a flatbed scanner and camera. In the resulting digitally altered photos, patterns, textures and shapes look both familiar and uncanny. Chitty references “mood boards”—collections of textiles used by designers—by showing side-by-side series of photos. In the store window, a checkerboard trellis hangs from the ceiling like fabric, framing the textiles and tiles within. (Audrey Keiffer)
Through February 21 at Unison, 1911 West Division