GREG MILLER: Once Upon A Time

These innovative, mixed-media paintings render familiar imagery and text into assemblages saturated with poignant slices of Americana. Nostalgic nods to ubiquitous tropes, such as: billboards, pulp fictions, comic books, magazine adds 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 grandfather 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,Millerbecameacollectorof vintagemagazines,newspapers,zinesand popular culture which he utilizes today as a part of his medium.

The exhibition’s title comes from the work Once Upon a Time, which illustrates many of the themes, and techniques characteristic of Miller’s oeuvre. Central to the image is a black-and-white painting of a vintage Hollywood city-scape during its “Golden Age”. Super-imposed, is the profile of a comic book action-hero surveying the vista. To the right, Grisaille is applied with spray paint to produce a photorealistic portrait of a woman seductively peering out from what appears to be a cropped still-frame. The scratched surface alludes to wear, and the passage of time. Collaged below is a text clipping of “the right” with a clock next to it, suggesting “time”. On the far left, a faceted crystal highball glass is labeled with a clipping reading “ACTION”.