Sara Nightingale Gallery is pleased to present Steve Miller, Your Version, My Version, currently on view in the gallery. There will be a reception on Saturday, April 16 from 5:30 - 7:30. The exhibition will run through April 30th.
Since 2005 Steve Miller has been taking X-rays of lungs: the lungs of our planet. It is the oxygen/ CO2 exchange of the Amazon region that interests Miller in his Health of the Planet (HOP) series, in which X-rays of flora and fauna of the region inform his visual vocabulary. Science and technology have always factored in Miller’s art, technology being the “language of our time” and the means through which we all communicate. Like a scientist, Miller investigates and questions in his artistic practice. But rather than seeking a specific set of outcomes, he strives for compelling images that inspire dialogue. Your Version, My Version includes paintings from the Health of the Planet series that examine relationships between organic forms and technical ones, the macro and the micro, photography and painting, representation and abstraction.
The series required Miller to travel to Brazil in order to work with a local hospital to procure X-rays of indigenous plants and animals. The specimens are "caught like patients under the scrutinizing eye of the X-ray". Recent explosions in social, cultural and economic growth in the region have led to decay as much as they have to development. Depleted forests, overpopulated favelas, and endangered species all contribute to the asthmatic gasping of our global lungs that holds Miller’s interest. The need for electricity expressed in the tangled power lines of the favela might seem worlds away from the taxidermy trophy hanging on the walls of the elite, but these references in Miller’s work, however aestheticized and beautifully transformed, imply that everyone is complicit in consumption’s impact on the environment, even if we have different “versions" of the causes, effects and solutions.
Steve Miller has an extensive international exhibition history including participation in museum shows at The Brooklyn Museum, The New Museum, The Bronx Museum in New York, The National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, The Aldrich Museum, The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, The Rose Art Museum and the Broad Art Museum in Michigan. In 2017 Glitterati will publish a 160 page monograph of his work of the last 20 years.
Saturday, April 16 is Spring Fling at the Parrish Art Museum, which begins at 7:30 p.m. after the gallery reception. You can purchase tickets here: http://parrishart.org/SpringFling2016
The gallery will be open this weekend on Friday, March 25 and Saturday, March 26 from 11- 6 p.m. and available for appointments on Easter Sunday. Open by chance or appointment on weekdays. 631-793-2256.