Jul. 8, 2012 - Jun 30, 2013 : Nate Page: Instituted Angles of Path and Display

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 15:25:24 -0700

Nate Page
Instituted Angles of Path and Display
Exhibition Date: July 7, 2012 - June 2013
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 7, 2012, 7pm - 9pm
Armory's Main Stairwell

Armory Center for the Arts presents a temporary, site-specific installation by Los Angeles-based artist Nate Page in its central stairwell through June 2013.

Page’s newest work, entitled Instituted Angles of Path and Display, challenges the ultra-functional design of the Armory’s main stairwell. Page has removed one of the stairwell’s two large metal handrails, turned it 90 degrees, and mounted it in the middle of the space on a pedestal-like structure that follows the crooked trajectory of the stairs and the landing. This simple gesture both highlights and alters the existing framework and prescriptive design of the space, which remains fully functional although visually distorted. Central to Page’s practice is an interest in engaging elements of perceived and given space in built environments, often through objects dismissed as peripheral or incidental.

Page acknowledges that railings generally can serve two functions: one for handrail support, and the other as a boundary. By turning a railing on its side and using it to bisect the Armory stairwell, Page shifts our point of view what a handrail is for. Page has created a topography of the climber's passage and an opportunity for visitors to become aware of their physical and psychological relationships to the architecture by negotiating passage (stair) vs. path (boundary railing). Familiar visual and spatial rhythms are interrupted, inviting the viewer to reconsider the function of the space – and possibly, the artist hopes, to find more potential than what it is programmed for.

Nate Page lives in Los Angeles. His work has been seen at Lothringer Dreizehn Space for Contemporary Art in Munich, Hotel Pupik in Schrattenberg Austria, Warsaw Academy of the Arts, Warsaw, John Michael Kohler Center for the Arts in Sheboygan, WI, No Name Exhibitions @ The Soap Factory, Minneapolis, and at Cooper Union and Jen Bekman Gallery, both in New York. Page has produced many environments with Machine Project in Los Angeles including A Field Guide to LACMA at Los Angeles County Museum of Art and has shown nationally including Woodbury University Hollywood Gallery, Institute of Visual Arts at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. From 2001-2004, Page co-directed an experimental artist collaborative and exhibition space in Milwaukee called the Rust Spot. He received a MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and a BFA from Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and attended the Warsaw Academy of Art in Warsaw, Hotel Pupik in Schrattenberg Austria, and the New York Studio Program and the Summer Residency at The Cooper Union, both in New York City.

Nov. 15, 2012 - Dec 31, 2013 : The Full Dollar Collection of Contemporary Art on York Blvd. by X. Andrade

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 15:04:41 -0800

Outpost @ Armory is pleased present The Full Dollar Collection of Contemporary Art, an ongoing, neighborhood-based public art project conceived and launched by X. Andrade, an artist and anthropologist based in Ecuador. Andrade reconsiders the traditions of public art, signage, and murals by inviting collaboration between teams of artists, sign painters, and business owners. In the process he reveals and celebrates the inherent challenges of translation that occur within collaborative undertakings. This iteration of Full Dollar, realized for the first time in the United States, features four collaboratively produced images, hand painted by professional sign painters and inspired by the work of visual artists, on the storefronts of partnering businesses along York Boulevard between Avenues 50 and 52.

The resulting signs will be on display for one year and are made by the following teams:

Sign painter Rodolfo Cardona (“Kardona”), visual artist Ruby Osorio, and Awesome Playground, an indoor/outdoor children’s play area.

Sign Painter Anna Ialeggio, visual artist Martin Durazo, and Digicolor, a digital image lab.

Sign painter Kimberley “The Window Goddess” Edwards, visual artist Shizu Saldamando, and Mi Vida, a lifestyle boutique.
Sign painter Rodolfo Cardona (“Kardona”), artist Sandow Birk, and The Nogueira Building, a leading proprietor in the community since the 1960s.

Presented by Pop-Hop Books & Print. The Full Dollar Collection of Contemporary Art in Highland Park is produced by Outpost @ Armory with support from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.

About X. Andrade
X. Andrade (Otavalo, Ecuador, 1963) currently lives and works in New York City by way of Guayaquil and Quito, Ecuador where he was the Chair of the Visual Anthropology Program at the Latin American Graduate Faculty for Social Sciences (FLACSO-Ecuador). He defines himself as “an urban anthropologist and Chairman-for-Life of Full Dollar Inc., a company that traffics in anthropology and contemporary art.” His work is informed by his interest in casting an ethnographic look on the social life of objects, images, and ideas in an urban context.

Full Dollar Inc. is a company created by Andrade that involves collaboration with artists and serves to explore the fringes between anthropology and contemporary art. Its preferred strategy is appropriation, ranging from buildings, pieces or parts of generic landscapes to commercial logotypes, works and/or texts on art history, and cultural-management initiatives. Full Dollar parodies the authorized languages of art and the dominant discourse on public spaces.

About Outpost @ Armory
In late 2011, the celebrated artist- and neighborhood-centered organization Outpost for Contemporary Art was at a critical financial and administrative juncture. Rather than see the organization close, Armory Center for the Arts invited Outpost into the Armory fold with the aim of maintaining Outpost’s well-regarded programmatic vitality while augmenting Armory’s spirit and capacity to invent. Through focused planning and collaboration, a vision is emerging for melding Outpost’s international and community-based programs with Armory’s respected gallery and arts education programs.

Upcoming Events for Exhibitions: 2012

Jul. 8, 2012 - Jun 30, 2013 : Nate Page: Instituted Angles of Path and Display

Nov. 15, 2012 - Dec 31, 2013 : The Full Dollar Collection of Contemporary Art on York Blvd. by X. Andrade