The Extraordinary, Mundane Observations of Chris Miller jw lawson FINE ART gallery 2925 S. Delaware Ave., Bay View Artist's reception Friday, March 16, 5-9pm The subjects of Chris Miller’s paintings include a parking lot, a grocery store, a train window, a movie theater and a hand dryer. Miller paints everyday life as it comes to him. His painting style hints at realism, but with a cartoon quality. Some works are more loosely painted than others, observing a rough aesthetic. He employs a blend of oil and acrylic paints on either canvas or found boards. His lack of formal training beyond high school could cause one to view his painting style as naïve, but the absence of any pretenses underscores their credibility and a want of social, political or emotional emphases puts the works into a refreshing new category of Real. While most art can be described as a blend of accidental and deliberate choices, Miller’s embrace of the accidental renders his work completely unassuming. A camping accident last summer left Miller unable to use his good hand. Determined to keep painting, the artist produced a series of wrong- handed works entitled Pacific Ocean Murder Ballads. The inspiration for this body of works came from a National Geographic DVD on sharks. With the right amount of slop, these loosely painted works depicted various acts of carnage in bloodied waters. Without knowing the artist’s predicament, I would have thought Miller was merely capturing the gruesome truth of ravenous fish in exaggerated frenzy. Miller’s depictions are also not without humor. The artist created a series of canvas constructions of things that normally hang on walls, such as electric hand dryers and home alarm system panels. Crudely worked and scarcely trompe l’oiel, they have the feel of a child’s attempt and embrace a punk aesthetic. In these works, absurdity surrenders to humor with a level of sophistication akin to the ceramic reproductions of the disposable coffee cups sold in the MoMA gift shop. This same humor is found in his semi-relief paintings where just a portion of the painting is highlighted through the use of three-dimensional appendages. Reminiscent of the innovative paintings in the recent Biedermeier exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum, in which real-working clocks were inserted into the paintings in lieu of a painted clock, here the artist makes his appendages the central focus of the paintings. For instance, in Shell Game, a shady looking character stands behind a table, leaning towards the edge of the canvas as if trying to not be noticed. Painted on the table, and protruding from the canvas are three shells, creating three little pockets of air. With a slanted grin, Miller says to me, “There really is a peanut under one of those shells.” Another semi-relief painting by Miller is titled, Mushroom Stroganoff in Puerta Vallarta. In this long, vertical painting, a musician serenades a table of diners. The table takes up the foreground of the picture plane and placed on the table is a plate of creamy-coated noodles. Because the perspective is from those sitting at the table, the viewer becomes the dinner guest. Miller made tangible noodles from his own recipe and heaped them onto the painted plate. Their curled edges lift away from the canvas and chunks of unidentified bits can be found in the sauce. This 3D portrayal of the food takes the focus off the musician, who sadly has been up-staged by a plate of noodles. Equally absurd and perhaps more amusing is the painting he did of the leftovers. The artist also chooses peculiar locations to portray in his paintings. The best examples of this are Grocery Store and Ice Princess. The latter refers to the teenage movie that was showing in the cinema where Miller sat beneath the screen, peering out of the darkness into the thinly populated matinee audience, making sketches. The resulting painting is primarily dark blue with ice blue highlights and just a few hints of bright yellow. The faces in the audience look like thumbprints with two dots for eyes. The greatest detail work is in the carpeting and in a very small depiction of the film as it was reflected in the projection booth window. This lack of detail gives the work an abstract, fluid feel, highlighting his use of light as the strong point of the work. In Grocery Store, Miller captures shoppers milling about the isles of a local Pick’n Save. This one was painted from the perspective of the second floor security booth, where he made observations behind one-way glass. This is a curious painting because it is as mundane as a real grocery store. While the subject holds great potential for social commentary or even conflict, there are no clear messages to be taken from the shoppers or the neatly stacked merchandise. It is highly organized and strangely still. With the current rage of reality TV programs, I find Miller’s determination to depict such mundane settings rather progressive. Perhaps to their discredit, many of Chris Miller’s works beg to be liberated from the canvas and made into an animated cartoon, as they strongly echo a popular animation style. The artist’s paint handling is often second to his off beat choice of subjects. He promises to find more “uncomfortable places” in which to do his Peeping Tom act in the future. His stylistic approach aside, Miller’s paintings are honest works from an emerging artist, who, through humble observation, is forming his own definition of contemporary painting. Chris Miller lives in Milwaukee. He is currently the subject of an exhibition at the jw lawson FINE ART gallery at 2925 S. Delaware Avenue in Bay View. An Artist’s Reception will be held on Friday, March 16th from 5-9 pm. Nicole K. Hauser Nicole K. Hauser lives in Milwaukee and is a life-long arts appreciator. Comments? Email comments@susceptibletoimages.com <<<<<Back to contents page Copyright 2007. Material may not be used or reproduced without the permission of the author. |
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| Chris Miller, Grocery Store, 2003. Acrylic on canvas. |
| Chris Miller, Ice Princess, 2006. Oil and acrylic on canvas. |
| Chris Miller, Parking Lot, 2006. Oil and acrylic on canvas. |
