Jesse Chapman paints recognizable objects and iconography, yet gives little context to his images, causing them to read as gestures or open symbols. Fictive spaces play host to ambiguous, expressionless figures; rituals are performed between the animate and inanimate. These dream-like territories are governed by sharp contrasts of light and shadow and upon long looking, slowly reveal the disjointed strangeness of the human experience.
Jesse Chapman lives in upstate, New York. He has had solo exhibitions at Algus Greenspon Gallery, New York; McCaffrey Fine Art, New York; Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; and group exhibitions at Office Baroque, Brussels; Fortnight Institute, New York; The Suburban, Milwaukee; and Parisian Laundry, Montreal, among others. His work has been reviewed in Time Out New York; Beautiful/Decay; The Kansas City Star; and Sotheby’s Magazine, among others. Chapman holds a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Yale University.