Between the Lines: Michael MILLER Solo Exhibition
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 surely emphasize the densely woven continuities that
have governed Miller's development, and reaffirm his consistent practice of making
new art while progressing through a chain of variant self-repetitions whose play of
recurrence and reconsideration is analogue, in the manner of Proustian memory, for
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
then 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 — how legitimately we might try to put so many disparate pieces
and phases together, to balance their often seemingly contradictory demands, and to
look through them to understand the body of work and the career whose history we
see embedded there.
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 with 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.The deliberate use of the paint itself 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 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; in turn a master in the use of
colors and textures that 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.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Michael Miller, born in Glasgow, Scotland, trained in painting and drawing in Italy,
Switzerland and Mozambique. On moving to the USA in 2010, he studied abstract
painting, drawing and assemblage at the Art Students League of New York. In 2012,
he was awarded the League’s Matisse Estate Merit Scholarship, and in 2014, he was
selected as a visiting artist at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In January 2016, Michael
moved to Santiago, Chile, where he lived and worked until July 2017.
Miller is trained as a social scientist, and has studied at the Universities of
Edinburgh, Leicester and Pennsylvania, as well as the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en
Sciences Sociales in Paris. In 2001, he earned a PhD in contemporary history from the
European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Miller is also a long-standing
supporter of human rights, and has published work on a range of issues including
violence against children, gender-based violence, and the prevention of torture.
In addition to his art practice, Miller has been actively involved in community-based
public art projects and has supported several arts-based non-profit organizations as
a volunteer artist. He is also a respected member of the art community, having
served on the board of the Society of Scottish Artists.
He is currently based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
