'Everything is Painted Brown' includes the brown impasto paintings, reliefs, and sculptures he executed from 1985 through 1994. This show marks the first time this influential work has been shown together. The goopy impasto surface and monochromatic brown color of these pieces form a structural framework that is symbolic of the infantile and elemental, and within the art context alludes to Abstract Expressionism, Earthworks, as well as Actionism.
Everything is Painted Brown
John Miller's exhibition at Metro Pictures, 'Everything is Painted Brown,'
includes the brown impasto paintings, reliefs, and sculptures he executed
from 1985 through 1994. This show marks the first time this influential
work has been shown together. The goopy impasto surface and monochromatic
brown color of these pieces form a structural framework that is symbolic of
the infantile and elemental, and within the art context alludes to Abstract
Expressionism, Earthworks, as well as Actionism.
Miller¹s efforts are complex explorations difficult to reduce to a singular
identifiable style. He plunders the language of our visual culture in an
intellectual journey that has led him to cross all borders of style, medium,
form, and appearance. Recent installations have focused on the extreme
exaggerations of television game shows, with their sadly unreal world of
tacky sets, frenzied participants and smarmy hosts. He has been
simultaneously engaged in an ongoing work 'Middle of the Day' that includes
several hundred photographs of diverse locations and differing subjects
taken at the shadowless, lunch-break period. Other work has included
sensitively rendered pencil drawings of architectural types; genre paintings
and drawings; deconstructions of personals ads; sculptural accretions of
objects and shapes covered in colorful plastic fruit and flowers.
John Miller lives and works in New York and Berlin. One person shows
include: Center for Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Kunstverien, Hamburg; DAAD
Galerie, Berlin; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; and Magasin-Centre
National d¹Art Contemporain, Grenoble, France, accompanied by a
retrospective catalogue. His work was included in the Whitney Biennials in
1985 and 1991. Miller is a widely published writer and critic. The Middle
of the Day photographs are the subject of an upcoming publication by JRP
Editions. This publication will complete a boxed set, accompanying books
published in 1996 and 2000.
Reception Saturday 3 April 6 Â 8 PM
Upcoming exhibition: Cindy Sherman, 8 May  26 Jun
METRO PICTURES
519 WEST 24TH ST NEW YORK 10011 T: 212 206 7100 F: 212 337 0070