Conceptualist Month: Jim and Christa Whitten Idea Land

The Whittens seek meaning in hardware and non-art materials by transforming the gallery into an environment of unsettling wonder and exploring a theme summed up thus: THERE MAY BE RHYTHMS THAT EXTEND OVER MILLIONS OF YEARS THAT ARE UNRECOGNIZABLE TO US EXCEPT AS SINGLE UNCONNECTABLE AND UNEXPLAINABLE EVENTS

Jim and Christa Whitten each have art pedigrees that have prepared them to be the perfect collborators.

Christa is classically trained in several forms of art and graduated cum laude from the highly respected Paier College of Art. Recent collaborations include small works for ‘Bundeleen’, a large flowing painting entitled Meta-Fall for 'The Pyramid Scheme’ and ‘Behind the Lilac Bush’ where she painted two 90-foot-long panels of Japanese masa paper which was then folded by an origami artist and hung to create a cooperative veil for industrial sculptures.

Jim Whitten is a self-styled publisher, printer, and three-dimensional installation artist specializing in fluxist-like arrangements, assemblage, and 2-d graphic work. He curates like-minded conceptualists working in both sound and visual artworks. Ever questioning the terms of reality and propriety his work hangs in with an aesthetic formality that teases the principles of design to do what he wants them to do by submitting them to Dadaesque absurdity.