Michael MILLER

Truth Exists, Again
Essay by Francesca Marcaccio

Michael Miller's art unites mastery, mystery, simplicity, and contradiction. His methodical working process combines intense deliberation and experimentation, obsessive craft, cycles of revision and repetition, and decisive shifts of direction.

"Between the Lines," Michael Miller's solo exhibition at Jeeum Gallery, presents a series of paintings that delves into the relationship between personal experiences and societal ideas of truth and falsehood through the use of dazzle camouflage as visual language. The artworks in "Between the Lines" are deceptively simple but reveal complexity upon closer inspection.

Miller's works are connected by an underlying autobiographical thread, reflecting his personal experiences of growing up in Glasgow during the decline of the city's shipyards and heavy industry. His use of ship imagery references his father's service in the merchant navy while they are very contemporary in the themes they explore, reflecting on the wider political turmoil of our times. Ultimately, these are mirrors of Miller's inner world and his unique preoccupations and concerns.

On one level, the paintings emphasize the densely woven continuities that have governed Miller's development, reaffirming his consistent practice of making new art while progressing through a chain of variant self-repetitions whose play of recurrence and reconsideration is analog to the fullness of consciousness itself. Yet, our sampling makes us equally aware of the many sharp fissures and discontinuities in this same artistic evolution. Thinking about how we might articulate a meaning for these paintings inevitably draws us into broader questions of how, on the occasion of an exhibition, we should reckon with issues of coherence and "legibility" in an art so densely armored and internally complex.

Where and how should we begin to say what such an art means?

We could begin at a basic level, with the impact the art has on us before we label our pleasures or organize our questions—the particular blend of stimulations, irritations, and rewards that we sense as a personality or character in the presence of these paintings. Their yes-no rhythms of fast and slow, thick and thin, liquidity and dryness, intimacy and implacable chilliness, the literal and the inexplicable in fusion, leave an impression. The deliberate use of paint reveals weathering and corrosion, emphasizing the nautical origins of disruptive dazzle schemes. Lines, marks, and other compositional elements are occasionally left visible in an apparent gesture of "truthfulness," but in many cases, these nuances are fakes, introduced to undercut any suggestion of pictorial integrity.

Miller’s solicitation of touch in his paintings—his enfleshment of abstraction—has political ramifications that are in dialogue with the latest historical events and are made manifest in the way the works look as well as in how they were made. At various times, he has been the wielder of a cool, smoothly anonymous touch, and at others the author of some of the densest and most caressed surfaces in contemporary painting. His mastery of colors and textures creates a weathered effect that evokes sun-bleaching and corrosion, in keeping with the maritime origins of dazzle camouflage. Miller's use of color, line, and form creates a layered and thought-provoking visual language that speaks to the complexities of the human experience.

The paintings can be interpreted in a variety of ways, from playful to introspective, and Miller's reference to his father's connection to the merchant navy adds depth and meaning to the work. The series invites viewers to consider the ways in which our experiences shape our perception of reality, and how our understanding of truth can be influenced by societal and cultural forces.