John Miller

In his solo exhibition at Richard Telles Fine Art, John Miller continues his examination of the mundane and public space with new paintings and a PowerPoint presentation. Basing his series of paintings (started in 2013) on photographs inspired from his ongoing Middle of the Day project (started in 1994), we are confronted with depictions of pedestrians caught unaware by Miller’s camera between the hours of 12 to 2pm. Painted in grey-scale with deadpan realism, Miller details each person’s individual style as a mode of social portraiture, which in contrast to social realism, is comparatively desublimated. This is further highlighted by how the shape of each painting is dictated by the contours of the pedestrian, divorced from her urban background.

Miller’s PowerPoint presentation, “Reconstruction of a Public Sphere”, serves as a counterpoint to the paintings by focusing on a specific location, Battery Park City and the adjacent World Trade Center in New York. It is both a photographic essay and critical text—and despite its title, Miller’s most autobiographical work to date. Microsoft Corporation’s PowerPoint, the heir apparent to the 35-mm slide projector, sadly now “the staple of comedy skits”, is subverted by Miller’s narrative of personal memory and experience: he ponders the park’s civic history, public art projects, the architectural follies that punctuate it, including his evacuation from the area in the wake of 9/11. Upon returning to the park fifteen years later, Miller questions how public space develops from reconstruction—and the function of the public within it. Akin to the effects of the photograph, he considers how public space redacts local history as much as it conjures subjective memory.

John Miller is the subject of a comprehensive career survey (including a collaboration with Richard Hoek) at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, running until June 12. His recent solo and collaborative exhibitions this year include “Mannequin Death” at Metro Pictures, New York, and “Sex Appeal of the Inorganic” at Johann Widaur, Innsbruck, Germany (both exhibitions in collaboration with Richard Hoek). In 2015, Miller also held a two-venue solo exhibition at Mary Boone and Metro Pictures, New York; he held a solo exhibition at Campoli Presti, London the same year. Recent groups exhibitions featuring Miller’s work include “Call and Response” at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York, and “Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age” at the Museum Brandhorst, Munich, Germany in 2015. Miller lives and works in New York and in Berlin.