Dan Miller

White Columns is pleased to present the first solo exhibition by the Bay Area-based artist Dan Miller. The exhibition will consist of a discrete group of recent works-on-paper and a single work on canvas.

Dan Miller works at the celebrated Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, CA. Founded in 1974 Creative Growth consists of a studio art program and – since 1980 – a gallery that serves and supports mentally, physically, and developmentally disabled adult artists.

Diagnosed with autism, and with few verbal communications skills, Miller has developed an intensive body of work that employs language as its fundamental subject and departure-point. His extraordinary drawings take the form of accumulations of written descriptive texts, alphabets, and numerical sequences. (The texts often have strong biographical references, e.g. acknowledging specific Bay Area locales, and aspects of his immediate day-to-day life and family history.) Superimposed on top of one another, these individual words, numbers and phrases start to merge, creating all-over fields of partially obscured and often illegible texts. Juxtaposing formal methodologies (e.g. the use of indexical language and alphabetical and numerical systems, and repeated motifs such as light bulbs and books) with dynamic, yet highly disciplined drawing and mark-making, Miller’s works intuitively combine both conceptual and expressive approaches, to create a truly idiosyncratic hybrid form.
Dan Miller (b. 1961) lives in Hayward, CA. He works at Oakland’s Creative Growth Art Center. His work was recently included in the exhibition ‘Creative Growth’, organized by White Columns for Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York (2007). White Columns’ profiled his work at the 2007 Armory Show, New York. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions at Creative Growth’s Gallery, Oakland, and in shows at: Collection L’Art Brut, Lausanne (2006); Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco (2006); Ricco Maresca Gallery, New York (2005); and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2005), amongst others. His work recently entered the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Dan Miller’s exhibition is the third in an ongoing series of exhibitions at White Columns produced in collaboration with Creative Growth, and follows on from solo exhibitions by Creative Growth artists Aurie Ramirez (2005) and William Scott (2006.)
For more information call 212-924-4212 or email to info@whitecolumns.org