Joe Page
Flow Chart
November 22 – January 18, 2025
Hours: Saturdays from 12-4pm
“Flow Chart” is part of our 2024-2025 series of juried exhibitions. Exhibition hours at the Gallery at the Kranzberg are every Saturday from 12-4p.
“Flow Chart” is a series of site specific work. The materials and the imagery conjured with them are somewhat of a paradoxical anachronism. The creative process is entirely analog and object- based, but the finished work engages strongly with digital culture (video games, graphic design, VR, etc). This relationship between subject and methodology strikes me most during the installation process. After arriving in a new space, every element is unboxed and unwrapped, then laid flat on the ground in groups. Innumerable narrative variations can be constructed from this limited system, or “kit” of elements. I seek out architectural eccentricities: odd columns, narrow hallways, unused walls, windows, etc, to activate the spaces the installations inhabit in new and exciting ways. Essentially, everything in my “kit” is either a bubble or something modeled after that shape. The slip-cast porcelain bubbles are finished to remove overt traces of the hand, leaving an ambiguous, sterile, and modular impression. Located independently of any particular context, there is no sense of scale or purpose; a bubble can be molecular or planetary. The convex language of the bubble transfers to everything in flux, whether it’s the sculptural foam forms in three-dimensional space or the outlines of the impossibly flat vinyl colors traversing the walls, floors, and windows. The end goal is a space that is inviting, accessible, and fun, while offering a sophisticated visual rules-based system to be unraveled and explored by visitors.
ARTIST STATEMENT
The escapist allure of immersive environments drives my work, orienting the viewer in a place of comfort and curiosity. The vibrant colors, reductive imagery, and illustrated movements within the “Flow Chart” series of installations are deceptively simple, derivative of early video games, pinball machines, mass transit maps, and schematic diagrams. Within this framework, one soon begins to uncover the world’s underpinnings: a rules-based system of sculptural parameters, compositional logic, and spatial relationships. The reductive simplicity of these environments is at once comforting and cloying, sincere and cynical.
– Joe Page
ARTIST BIO
Born and raised in Northbrook, IL, Joe received his MFA in Ceramic Art from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2008 and his BA in Studio Art and Anthropology from Knox College in 2003. A childhood spent immersed in Legos and video games left him incurably obsessed with building imaginary objects and environments. He is currently an Associate Professor of Art and Area Head of Ceramics at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville in Edwardsville, IL. He previously taught at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA. His “Flow Chart” series of installations have been featured at various galleries, universities and art centers throughout the United States.
