Nicole Miller “For Now”

Koenig & Clinton

poster for Nicole Miller “For Now”
[Image: Nicole Miller "Michael in black" (2018) cast bronze, 41 x 16 x 24 in. and For Now (2018), laser light installation played on a loop (detail view)]

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Koenig & Clinton presents For Now, Nicole Miller’s second one-person exhibition with the gallery. For Now triangulates the artist’s latest digital video with her first foray into the more analog forms of sculpture and light-based installation.

At the center of the dimmed gallery floor, one encounters the rangy frame of world-class entertainer, Michael Jackson in the sculpture Michael in black (2018). Cast in bronze from molds that were formed by applying plaster directly to Jackson’s skin in 1987, it is hard to determine whether or not Jackson’s kneeling position appears pious or merely pensive. Such is the ambiguity that swirls about monuments as one frozen moment is tasked with bearing the weight of a lifetime.

With his limbs drawn close, one can also imagine Jackson waiting on a dark stage, his torso tightly coiled in the seconds before his body will be soaked in spotlight and he will spring into step after flawless step with an alacrity equaled only by that of his friend, Fred Astaire. For now, Jackson remains still - paused permanently within the long series of permutations that characterized the entertainer’s ever-evolving persona.

Around his figure and throughout the room, the words “for now” materialize, shift, expand and contract. Recalling the grand moment of technical sophistication in live concert special effects entertainment from the early 1980s, For Now (2018) morphs through various fonts, colors, and sounds; carving out space through analog laser light, only to vanish and reappear repeatedly. The phrase becomes a spectacle without end, dynamically suspended in eternal return.

The only continuous sound in the room belongs to acclaimed Italian voice actor, Pino Insegno. Between his animated expressions, Insegno offers an account for why he is sought after to stand in for the voices of Black American actors who star in exported Hollywood films. Within this particular imaginary, in which the temporary act of inhabiting another body takes the form of speaking through its image, we are reminded that every story is colored by its telling.

Nicole Miller (b. 1982, Tucson) received her M.F.A. from the Roski School of the Arts, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Solo exhibitions of her work include: Athens, California, California African American Museum, Los Angeles; The Borrowers, Koenig & Clinton, New York; Artists’ Film International: Nicole Miller, Ballroom Marfa; The Conductor, High Line Channel 22, New York; Believing is Seeing, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Death of a School, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneve; Every Word Said: History Lessons from Athens and Tucson, MoCA Tucson; and The Conductor, LAXART, Los Angeles. Miller has also participated in prominent group exhibitions such as: Los Angeles-A Fiction, MAC Lyon (2017) and Astrup Fearnley Museet (2016), Oslo; The Campaign for Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2016); Portraits and Other Likenesses, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2015); Made in L.A. biennial, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2012); Dallas Biennale, Dallas Contemporary (2012); and The Bearden Project, Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2011). Miller has been the recipient of the: John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Award (2018), Rome Prize (2016), William H. Johnson Prize (2015), Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant (2013), Artadia Award (2013), Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award (2012), among others. Miller currently holds the position of assistant professor in the department of visual arts at the University of California, San Diego. The artist lives and works in Southern California.

Media

Schedule

from September 14, 2018 to October 27, 2018

Opening Reception on 2018-09-14 from 18:00 to 21:00

Artist(s)

Nicole Miller

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