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Nate Page

Nate PageArtist’s Statement

I am curious about what draws people to aesthetic experience. I recognize that design can be a powerful form of manipulation behind this experience. Our environments are composed almost entirely of things that are devised to have specific influences over us. I’m interested in unpacking this form of social manipulation and exploring the cultural psychology intrinsic to the design of functional things and their environments. My recent body of work explores these themes through a cross-pollination of archetypal American public and domestic structures.

In my pursuit of understanding the effect of aesthetic experience, I have found inspiration in the theories of psychologist Edward Bernays regarding crowd psychology, propaganda and the birth of public relations. Applying strategies of simultaneous contrast, I create a set of conditions for experiencing anew our relationship with the culturally cliché. I purposefully engage elements often dismissed by people as peripheral to an activity. Seating and shelves become physical and symbolic characters ready to be used, exchanged and put into syntax with one another. The physicality of these works taps into the subconscious to become a psychological negotiation of the public and private self in a designed society.

Website: natepage.com

Biography

Select Solo Exhibitions from 2008-2011

2011
Winter Collection 2011: Protester 1, More Funner Projects, Miami

2010
Subject/Object/Project, Machine Project, Los Angeles

Select Group Exhibitions from 2008-2011

2011
couchbleachers for Camp Cleveland, Machine Project residency at Spaces Gallery, Cleveland

2010
Interrogation by Design, MKE-LAX, Woodbury University Hollywood Gallery, Los Angeles

2009
Variations in Design Practice, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles

2008
The Machine Project Field Guide to Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles

Fellowships and Awards

2010
The Durfee Foundation ARC Grant recipient

2008
CalArts Alumni Fund, California Institute of the Arts

EDUCATION

M.F.A., 2008
California Institute of the Arts

B.F.A., 2000
Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design

1999
New York Studio Program (AICAD)