Paris, 10 September 2012, Art Media Agency (AMA).
From 8 September to 11 November 2012, the Praz-Delavallade Gallery in Paris is displaying “The Petrified Forest”, a new exhibition of artist John Miller.
John Miller’s work is characterised by a multiform aspect: painting, sculpture, photography, and video. With humour, empathy, and perspicacity, his works immerse the spectator into the maelstrom of daily life and sublimate banality. In his previous series, Miller took an interest into the differences between the price and meaning of things, and questioned in depth the notion of worth in our capitalist societies. His most recent projects are dedicated to representations both critical and poetic of the emotional affects, of the relationships to “biopower” (concept elaborated by Michel Foucault) and of its impact on individuals.
In the new series of wooden relief paintings displayed in this exhibition, Miller uses again the subject of individuals crying in reality TV shows, a theme previously tackled in the “Everything Is Said” series. The use of a drab palette of colours, of greys and browns, takes the bad taste inherent in mass media from the images and highlights the paintings’ manufactured aspect. In his “Game Show Paintings” series (1998-2000), John Miller has focused on the coloured settings of TV games, in opposition with the candidates’ apparently interchangeable character. In opposition, the gendre of reality TV shows seems to focus on individuals and on staged or unstaged situations but John Miller chooses to depict the other side of the picture. Crying has indeed become a performative asset: angers, fights and tears represent strong moments in these shows. On the same level as beauty or charisma, the ability to show one’s emotions in front of cameras seems to have become an essential prerogative when participating in these shows. With his work, Miller reminds that every representation of reality necessarily requires a subjective point of view.
This is John Miller’s fourth solo exhibition in the Praz-Delavallade Gallery. Currently, his work is also displayed in group exhibitions at the Rubell Family Collection in Miami and at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
