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James Waite

Sticker Logo Series 001 - 040
2018
digital print on sticker in mylar bag and plastic hanging clips
dimensions variable, stickers each 2" x 1.5"

(b. 1994 – El Paso, TX) James Waite is an interdisciplinary artist whose projects are generally serialized, multi-unit installations. His highly structured, iterative approach seems equally informed by the historic tradition of printmaking and the contemporary practice of computer programming.

In this work, Waite has created an extended 80-component sticker pack, where each sticker is a professionally fabricated, adhesive-backed print featuring a unique geometric construction based upon the artist’s own initials, “JW.” While many artists struggle a lifetime to find their “signature style,” Waite has begun his artistic career toying with and critiquing the very notion of a foundational artistic identity or one’s individual signature. The vehicle for the sale and distribution of this work models the conventional commercial spaces from which we buy our daily-use items. Sticker packs arranged on display racks could theoretically be placed in innumerable commercial locations. Priced moderately and available to the public widely, this project offers a second critique of the “professional” artist’s first principles: the protective display of one’s work in a highly rarified, exclusive white box gallery.

Waite received a BFA in drawing from the Cleveland Institute of Art with an emphasis in Visual Culture, Arts, and History. He has exhibited in a number of spaces in the Cleveland area, including SPACES Gallery, Forum Artspace, and the Cleveland Institute of Art’s Reinberger Gallery. In 2016, he collaborated on a site-specific, interactive work situated in Toby Plaza, University Circle, Cleveland, OH.


From the nominating artist:

I admire James Waite’s point of view. He is part of a new breed of artists that challenge what art is. This challenge is not purely an academic exercise but more a synthesis of the environment and time he lives in. He uses the internet, software programming, and social media as naturally as a painter wields a brush. Take note as this young critical mind examines the tools and infrastructure of our digital environment.
— Marcus Brathwaite

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JAMES WAITE     BRINSLEY TYRRELL      HILDUR ÁSGEIRSDÓTTIR JÓNSSON     ELI GFELL     MARTIN E. O'CONNOR     KRISTEN CLIFFEL