JEFF PAGE
b.1978, Denver, CO
BIO
I got my BFA at the San Francisco Art Institute and recently completed my MFA at UC Santa Barbara. I was recently featured in issue #111 of New American Paintings, was nominated for the 2015 Dedalus Foundation Masters of Fine Art Fellowship and recently completed my post as Artist-in-Residence for the Department of Art at UC Santa Barbara. I am currently living and working in Denver, CO.
HOW & WHAT
Art is a how and a what. It is a process and a thing. Poetic action. A practice of being, or as Rauschenberg says, it's "the best way I've found to get along with myself".
In my work, content and process are often one in the same. Much of my work exists as self contained, individual, finished pieces and rarely as part of a larger series, although all of the work plays well together.
In my current painting, video and sculptural works there is a recurring form that looks like this: I><I . Sometimes it is clearly a bow tie, sometimes it's a corner space and other times it's an open book. I use this form to explore, sometimes queer, the relationships between TEXT, art, clothing and space. I see this current interest in TEXT as a reaction to my recent immersion in the world of academia in my theory-driven, thesis-centric MFA program. It also comes from a deep love of language and poetry- both material and textual.
CURRENTLY READING / THINKING ABOUT
This great essay on text, painting, visual literacy by Irina Costache
Off the Wall - A Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg by Calvin Tompkins
The Trouble With Normal by Michael Warner
Touching Feeling by Eve Sedgwick
PRESS / PUBLICATIONS
New American Paintings MFA issue #111
UCSB 2015 MFA Thesis Exhibition Catalogue
Scion Xchange Featured Artist