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| Travis Dubreuil for The New York Times |
Recent Alum (2008) Matthew Miller's latest exhibition has been reviewed by Ken Johnson in The New York Times. This article has been Reposted from ArtsBeat, May 21, 2011
By KEN JOHNSON
Published: May 5, 2011
The five self-portraits that constitute “Matthew Miller: the magic black of an open barn door on a really sunny summer day, when you just cannot see into it,” at the Famous Accountants gallery. (1673 Gates Avenue, between St. Nicholas and Cypress Avenue, Bushwick, Brooklyn, through June 5.)
Lots of painters emulate Renaissance old masters. Few do so to such riveting effect as Matthew Miller, a young, Brooklyn-based artist. Each of the five oil-on-panel works here, dating from 2008 to the present, is a self-portrait of the artist, with closely cropped or shaved hair, against a glossy, jet-black background. He is viewed straight on or in three-quarter profile, with bare neck and upper shoulders, his high forehead deeply furrowed, his eyes heavy-lidded. He could be a spiritually anguished Lutheran monk painted by Lucas Cranach.
Mr. Miller gives his head a striking sculptural solidity. With dark lines emphasizing his nose, full lips and deep eye sockets, his head looks as if it were carved from marble and smoothed to a satiny sheen. Mr. Miller is not a hair-by-hair, warts-and-all realist. He erases fine details while recording his epidermal topography with exquisite attentiveness. The paintings are nearly colorless, but pinkish-beige tones layered over cooler hues create an opalescent glow. They verge on the grotesque.
Mr. Miller comes from a non-mainstream background. Raised as a Mennonite and trained at the New York Academy of Art, which favors traditional figurative representation, he brings to his art a painstaking work ethic and an earnest humanism. His work exudes a feeling of religious devotion — not to any transcendent deity but to the process of painting itself. That’s what makes it modern. No prizes in heaven or on earth are guaranteed for this kind of faith, but he persists because it is, like prayer, its own reward.
A version of this review appeared in print on May 6, 2011, on page C34 of the New York edition with the headline: Matthew Miller: ‘the magic black of an open barn door on a really sunny summer day, when you just cannot see into it’.
Lots of painters emulate Renaissance old masters. Few do so to such riveting effect as Matthew Miller, a young, Brooklyn-based artist. Each of the five oil-on-panel works here, dating from 2008 to the present, is a self-portrait of the artist, with closely cropped or shaved hair, against a glossy, jet-black background. He is viewed straight on or in three-quarter profile, with bare neck and upper shoulders, his high forehead deeply furrowed, his eyes heavy-lidded. He could be a spiritually anguished Lutheran monk painted by Lucas Cranach.
Mr. Miller gives his head a striking sculptural solidity. With dark lines emphasizing his nose, full lips and deep eye sockets, his head looks as if it were carved from marble and smoothed to a satiny sheen. Mr. Miller is not a hair-by-hair, warts-and-all realist. He erases fine details while recording his epidermal topography with exquisite attentiveness. The paintings are nearly colorless, but pinkish-beige tones layered over cooler hues create an opalescent glow. They verge on the grotesque.
Mr. Miller comes from a non-mainstream background. Raised as a Mennonite and trained at the New York Academy of Art, which favors traditional figurative representation, he brings to his art a painstaking work ethic and an earnest humanism. His work exudes a feeling of religious devotion — not to any transcendent deity but to the process of painting itself. That’s what makes it modern. No prizes in heaven or on earth are guaranteed for this kind of faith, but he persists because it is, like prayer, its own reward.
A version of this review appeared in print on May 6, 2011, on page C34 of the New York edition with the headline: Matthew Miller: ‘the magic black of an open barn door on a really sunny summer day, when you just cannot see into it’.
