The Bulletin Board: Dan Miller

White Columns’ is pleased to present its second exhibition by the Bay Area-based artist Dan Miller (following on from his widely celebrated solo exhibition in 2007.) The exhibition, in our Bulletin Board project space, will consist of a discrete group of recent works-on-paper made using a manual typewriter.

Dan Miller works at the 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 conventional verbal communications skills, Miller has developed an intensive body of work that employs language as its fundamental subject and departure-point. His extraordinary drawings – shown in his 2007 exhibition at White Columns – take the form of accumulations of 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.) Typically 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 drawings intuitively combine both conceptual and expressive approaches, to create a truly idiosyncratic hybrid form.

For his current exhibition Miller will exhibit for the first time works made using a manual typewriter, a process which not only transforms the legibility of his texts, but radically expands the formal potential and possibilities of his work.