Jameson Page – Love Triangle

This project was a collaborative endeavor between myself and two artists. These two are also very dear friends, hence the triangular system of love between us. Though I was the initiator and officially held the role of curator, these positioning titles are not adequate for describing how the project was planned and enacted.

Love Triangle was defined by a fascination with play. Play as an impetus, momentum, and crescendo of artistic and curatorial practice. The artists I worked with, April Martin and Bobby Gonzales, use playfulness and all its tangents as a primary mode for making in their work. We used D. W. Winnicott’s psychoanalytic text Playing and Reality as a thread to stitch our practices together. Winnicott situates “play” as an integral, yet shied away from component to everyday life. A mentality akin to childlike fascination and mindfulness of the world that is lost as we enter adulthood. Though the exploration ascribed to artistic practice is often labeled as play, we were aware of the increased professionalization of the artist and those circulating around them, and the consumerist mentality of producing artworks and exhibitions under late capitalism. Responding to this, our focus was on playfulness and relationality, rather than rigor and labor as prioritized values that would coalesce in Love Triangle. We were drawn to the concept of “the amateur” and the uncomfortableness of learning something new together. The three of us realized we all had a deep passion for dance and an interest in experimenting with movement, though up till then we had been hesitant in our desires.

Jameson is a curator and writer currently in the Dual MA program at SAIC. He is interested in the potentials of queerness and its iterations, and the methods artistic practice attempts, fails, and succeeds in deconstructing and/or repairing problematic or limiting societal systems. His curatorial practice involves creating new platforms for artists working in critical and identity-based concepts. He received his BA in Art History from Tyler School of Art and has curated public and gallery projects in Chicago and Philadelphia.