John Miller
THE RIGHT NOT TO BE STARED AT OR EXAMINED
Los Angeles
11 September – 13 November, 2021
WORKS EXHIBITED
EXHIBITION VIEWS
ARTIST PAGE
The title of the show, taken from Erving Goffman's book Relations in Public, reflects Goffman's concern for the spatial demarcation of the self from others. The various works in the exhibition bear out Miller's interest in these distinctions. A sculpture made up of a set of ceramic mugs takes center stage in the gallery. These coffee cups, bearing digitally printed images of police barricades, are arrayed like a set of chess pieces across a large pedestal. After 9/11 and the BLM protests, the New York Police Department used these barriers to control the public. As these gradually morphed into semi-permanent installations, Miller became interested in these as “a kind of unconscious public sculpture.”
Surrounding the pedestal and interior walls of the gallery is an installation of photographs from Miller's Middle of the Day series, all taken during the pandemic when he split his time between Berlin and New York. The series, begun in 1993, is an ongoing and open-ended project bound together by the simple constraint of shooting photos between twelve and two p.m. These images capture the experience of being in public space, structured by coded urban architecture and a voyeuristic point of view. Seen together, they comprise a study of social relations in public.
Taking their cue from his Middle of the Day photographs, Miller's new paintings juxtapose geometric, brown impasto shapes with images of public space. Miller’s use of this color, burnt sienna, has become a signature trope in his oeuvre—"a trademark that no one wanted, a repugnant trademark." These relief surfaces compete with the photographic images. The point of view oscillates between surface and background. They begin to act as barricades, obfuscating the digital image with a superimposed barrier.
Across the various elements in the show, Miller's work addresses the semiotics of public space and how it interpenetrates social behavior.
John Miller (b. 1954, Cleveland, Ohio) lives and works between New York and Berlin. In 2016 the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, presented the first major survey of his work. In 2020, the Schinkel Pavilion in Berlin brought together an overview of his work from the 1980s to the present. He has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at institutions such as Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Museum Ludwig, Cologne DE; Kunsthalle Zurich CH; Musée d'art moderne et contemporain (MAMCO), Geneva CH; Magasin Centre National d'Art Contemporain, Grenoble FR; and Kunstverein Hamburg, DE. His work has been included in exhibtions at the New Museum, New York US; CAPC Musée D'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux FR; Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid ES; and MoMA PS1, New York US. His work was also featured in the 1991 Whitney Biennial and the 2010 Gwangju Biennale. Miller's writing and criticism have appeared in Artforum, e-flux, and Texte zur Kunst and in the compilations The Price Club: Selected Writings, 1977-1996 (JRP Editions and the Consortium, 2000) and The Ruin of Exchange (Geneva and Dijon: JRP-Ringier and les Presses du Reel, 2012). Miller is currently Professor of Professional Practice, Department of Art History, Visual Arts Concentration at Barnard College/Columbia University, in New York.
