MELIK OHANIAN – STUTTTERING

Posted on 2015-01-19

The starting point of the exhibition is an exibition. Stutttering(Stut/t/te/ring, spelled with three T) extends a previous exhibition titled Stuttering (spelled with two T) featured at the CRAC in Sète, last July. Whether it be in the previous title, You are mY destinY (2003), or in the series Word(s) (2006-2014), Melik Ohanian revises the rules of typography, sharpening the ambiguity of words and expressions. Here, the notion of echo (and reverberation) that spring from repeating a single syllable characterizes the interplay among his displayed works. Almost thirty works are presented at Galerie Chantal Crousel and at La Douane to demonstrate the quasi syntactic way the artist works, the various perceptions, the coexistences of different dimensions (scientific, political, social, historical) that have always undergirded his approach and that reflect, in a more collective sense, our own rapport with the contemporary, global and dematerialized world, as well as our imaginary.

Exhibition runs through to February 6th, 2015

Galerie Chantal Crousel
10 rue Charlot
75003, Paris
France

www.crousel.com

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JOHN MILLER – HERE IN THE REAL WORLD

Posted on 2015-01-19

Miller exhibits his game show paintings (begun in 1998) and two series of relief portrait paintings: reality tv personalities (started 2009) and the more recent pedestrian paintings (started 2013), which are presented as a frieze of figures in the gallery’s first room. Additionally, Miller presents a wallpaper mural and a digital animation made with longtime collaborator Takuji Kogo under the name Robot.

In each series of paintings Miller selects images of people in supposedly uncontrived poses and paints them in a realist manner. Like the wallpaper mural, the pedestrian paintings use images from the Middle of the Day series, an ongoing project he began in 1994 in which he takes a photograph everyday between 12pm and 2pm. These images of unwittingly photographed pedestrians reflect what clothing, hairstyle, and other personal articles communicate in what Miller refers to as the “presentation of self” that occurs in public space. Where the pedestrian paintings depict public groups, Miller’s reality tv paintings focus on the ostensibly private or intimate moments in which cast members, usually alone, breakdown and cry in front of the camera and in turn the show’s audience. Precursors to this series, Miller’s game show paintings anticipated the packaging of real life that emerged with the ascendancy of reality tv and social media. These paintings present either the impossibly jubilant contestants or the stage sets for popular shows such as The Price is Right and Let’s Make a Deal.

Exhibition runs through to February 14th, 2015

Metro Pictures
519 West 24th Street
New York
NY 10011

www.metropictures.com

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