Subsequent time you are taking a improper flip looking for an out-of-the-way gallery we hope you do not run into Harland Miller – you would possibly simply miss the opening. “When you had been misplaced and stopped to ask a passer-by for easy instructions – you’d be unfortunate if that passer-by was me,” the artist says, “as a result of I’ve a method of over-talking issues, even getting from A to B.
“This can be a sort of situation, and I feel my ‘Letter Work’ may very well be a unconscious transfer to deal with it – to reverse the illness and work with as little language as attainable.”
Chances are you’ll be happier although to be directed to the information that Miller has collaborated with London’s ICA on a few different-sized print editions of these letter work, to mark the gallery’s seventy fifth anniversary. The entire sale proceeds will go in direction of supporting the ICA’s future occasions, exhibitions and studying program and you should purchase one of many prints – strictly restricted to 75 screenprints – by means of Artspace right here.
XXX, 2023, is taken from a portray of the identical title, first proven in Miller’s 2019 solo present at White Dice, Hong Kong. The print takes the type of the quilt of a novel, with the highest part a fancy graphic layering of letters and colours, counterbalanced by a clear band of impartial colour bearing the title and creator/artist’s identify. Drips of paint on the backside of the canvas expose its layering of colours.
The work was one of many final the artist accomplished earlier than his Hong Kong present. Harland informed us on the time that the paint was nonetheless drying when it was loaded onto the boat sure for Hong Kong.
Miller’s letter work are a part of an ongoing collection during which the artist employs mono or bi-syllabic phrases to create hard-edged letter work with daring, saturated colours. They reference, amongst different parts, Robert Rauschenberg and Ed Ruscha’s use of vernacular signage. However they may be a response to the truth that, because the artist admits, he’s no fan of utilizing ten phrases when twenty will do.
“I confess to having at all times appreciated the type of the haiku,” Miller says. “Primarily due to the worth it places on the syllable. If, because the poet John Cooper Clarke says, ‘To convey one’s temper / in seventeen syllables / may be very di-fic…’ – how a lot more durable wouldn’t it be then utilizing only one syllable or two? Up, If, No.”
Within the works, Miller depicts his letters in a variety of typefaces, by means of a means of isolating, overlaying and reconnecting, to create a way of depth within the picture that deconstructs and abstracts the that means of language itself.
The letter X is critical to the artist in its kind and design but in addition given its connotations and connection to punk rock and X-rated cinema. The letters are constructed up from layers of assorted colours, their picture suggesting objects in movement, the place a number of kinds are compressed directly, kaleidoscopic and clear – like a collection of sequential, clear slides.
Miller has an extended affiliation with the ICA. He was a part of the Fools Rain group exhibition there in 1996 and was the Author-in-Residence in 2002.
Purchase XXX, 2023 right here, and get a duplicate of Miller’s up to date and revised Phaidon ebook, In Shadows I Boogie, right here.
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