GREG MILLER

Greg Miller’s innovative paintings render familiar imagery and text into artworks saturated with poignant slices of Americana. Nostalgic nods to ubiquitous tropes, such as billboards, pulp fictions, comic books, magazine ads and cinema marquees figure in fractions across the canvas. With carefully selected images he composes vignettes to articulate a vernacular about American life and the pervasive symbology of American consumer culture. Disparate objects and figures combine their relationship to one another, coalesce and become a singular subject. The exhibition’s title suggests a fairytale and both the glamour and illusion which Hollywood exports.

Growing up in northern California, Miller’s grandmother would take him on road trips to ghost-towns around Lake Tahoe. While exploring the decaying homes people had abandoned, he was struck by the resourcefulness used to gild the walls with collages of old magazines and newspaper clippings. These archaeological ruins were a foil in contradiction with the tinsel of the aspirational advertisements dressing their walls. Subsequently, Miller became a collector of vintage magazines, newspapers, zines and popular culture which he uses today as a part of his medium.

Miller’s artistic process can be likened to that of a contemporary archaeologist. By layering books, magazines, and other materials onto the surface of his artworks, he engages in a form of excavation and exploration. Much like an archaeologist delving into the layers of the earth to uncover fragments of the past, Miller digs into the layers of images and text to discover hidden clues and meanings.

Greg Miller (b. 1951) was born in Sacramento, California and holds a Master of Arts Degree from San Jose University. Once a long-time Venice, California resident, he currently resides in LA, CA & Austin, Texas. His work is featured in numerous museum and private collections, including those of: the San Jose Museum of Art, Newport Harbor Museum, Crocker Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Laguna Art Museum, Riverside Art Museum, Frederick R. Weisman Foundation and Charles Saatchi Foundation. The Get Go, a volume of his writings, photography and paintings was published in 2010, and the first comprehensive monograph of the artist, Signs of the Nearly Actual, was published in 2009.

EXHIBITIONS
True Romance
Once Upon A Time
Flashbacks
The Lost Coast: Greg Miller & Nick Hunt
DEEP WATER
Greg Miller: West Wind
Greg Miller & Michael Mew: The Misfits
J STREET

MEDIA
INCONVERSATION: Greg Miller