John Miller
New Horizon
November 18, 2023 – January 20, 2024
John Miller (b.1954, Cleveland OH) has exhibited extensively since his first solo show at White Columns, New York in 1982. Along with Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw and Christopher Williams, Miller is part of an influential group of artists who studied together at CalArts in the late 1970s. Over the course of forty years, Miller has produced a diverse body of work that addresses figuration, language, valuation, social hierarchy and relations and abjection. In 2016, his work was the subject of a major survey exhibition I Stand, I Fall featuring over 75 art works at the Institute of Contemporary Art / ICA, Miami curated by Alex Gartenfeld (catalog).
Other major solo exhibitions include An Elixer of Immortality at the Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin in 2020, The Middle of the Day, Museum im Bellpark, Kriens, Switzerland in 2018, a 2011 exhibition at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne in conjunction with his being awarded the Wolfgang Hahn Prize (catalog); A Refusal to Accept Limits, a mid-career retrospective at the Kunsthalle Zurich curated by Beatrix Ruf, (cat.), Consolation Prize at the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, University of British Columbia, Vancouver (with Mike Kelley) (cat.), Parallel Economies, Le Magasin, Centre National d’Art Contemporain de Grenoble (cat.), KW / Kunst-Werke, Berlin (with Richard Hoeck) and a mid-career survey at MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY in 1998.
Miller’s more recent group exhibitions include the Inaugural Exhibition at the Rubell Museum, Washington DC (ongoing), Where Art Might Happen: The Early Years of CalArts, curated by Christina Végh, Kestner Gesellschaft, Hannover, Germany; Everything Is Connected: Art and Conspiracy, The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Met Breuer New York, NY, The Conditions of Being Art: Pat Hearn Gallery and American Fine Arts, Co. (1983-2004), The Hessel Museum, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age at the Museum Brandhorst, Germany, Collecting Lines: Drawings from the Ringier Collection, Villa Flora, Winterthur, Switzerland, Take It or Leave It at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Gold at the Bass Museum, Miami Beach, Expo 1, New York: Dark Optimism at MoMA PS 1, New York, NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set Trash and No Star at the New Museum, New York, Painting Forever at the KW / Kunst-Werke Berlin, Carte Blanche at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and American Exuberance at the Rubell Family Collection, Miami (cat.) among many others. Miller's work has been included in important biennials such as the 1985 and 1991 editions of the Whitney Biennial, the 2010 Gwangju Biennale and most recently, in 2018, the 33rd Bienal de São Paulo / São Paulo Biennial (with Richard Hoeck).
Miller is a prolific writer and critic, published in Artforum, BOMB magazine, and Texte zur Kunst among many others, as well as in monographs on Mike Kelley, Christopher Williams, Dan Graham, Martha Rosler and Adrian Piper to name a few. His writings have been compiled in the publications The Price Club: Selected Writings, 1977-1996 (JRP Editions and the Consortium, 2000) and The Ruin of Exchange (Geneva and Dijon: JRP-Ringier and les Presses du Reel, 2012). In 2015, Afterall Books published Mike Kelley: Educational Complex, Miller's in-depth study of that work.
Miller's work can be found in important museum collections worldwide including the Metropolitan Museum, New York City, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, MOCA / Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, as well as important private foundations like the Sammlung Ringier, Zurich, the Sammlung Falkenberg, Hamburg, Germany and the Rubell Museum, Washington DC / Miami. His work is on permanent exhibition at the MAMCO / Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain, Genève, Switzerland.
Miller lives and works in New York and Berlin and his extensive exhibition and artwork archive can be found online at http://www.lownoon.com. His latest monograph I Stand, I Fall (König Books / D.A.P. 2017) edited by and with introduction by Alex Gartenfeld, texts by Ellen Salpeter and Hal Foster and including a conversation with Isabelle Graw is available.
