Allison Miller in New York

Ugh I’ve been posting so much about NY lately.  But when I stumbled upon this show, I just had to write about it.  I posted about Allison Miller sometime in January, after coming across her work in Bob Nickas’ tome ‘Painting Abstraction’.  Her work is eccentric, surreal, and magical.  She did her MFA at UCLA, and has shown widely on the west coast, but this is her first solo show in NYC.  Sharon Butler of Two Coats of Paint calls it a ‘knockout.’ 

Bulletin, 2011.  acrylic and oil on canvas 40” by 40”

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Expanding Room, 2011, acrylic, oil and dirt on canvas, 72” by 54”

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(Winter x Spring), 2011.  acrylic and oil on canvas, 29 1/4” by 25 3/4”

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Elephant, 2011.  oil, acrylic, gesso on canvas.  29 1/4” by 25 3/4”

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The show is at Susan Inglett Gallery and runs from 26 Jan to 3 March, 2012. 

Interesting to look at Miller’s work after reading Raphael Rubinstein’s article Provisional Painting-  she seems to combine sensuous exuberance with anti-painting.

From the press release:

“Allison Miller’s paintings attest to the evocative possibilities of abstraction. Imbued with a vibrant and dissonant musicality, her hand-drawn lines, geometrically-inclined forms and structural use of patterning coalesce into a graceful unification of disparate energies. Drawing inspiration from a diverse and unlikely meeting of influences, most recently Vuillard, Fontana, and Magritte, the work seeks to render the uncanny and the absurd in abstract form.

From inspiration to execution, Miller’s approach is designed to shake both maker and viewer from a well-worn track. Her process is a journey without predetermined destination, a map of its progression contained within each piece. Every line and layer resonates with the improvisational evolution of the process. “There is no plan to stray from,” said Miller in a recent interview, “…I am constantly trying to undermine the ostensible priority of the painting in order to achieve a state of perpetual surprise.” Through varied surface textures, oscillating opacities, complex transitions - Miller’s paintings create a distinctive visual syntax culminating in images that give form to the idea of liminal space.”