Kitsch mixed-media comes to Palmer Gallery

Jackson Reeves Assistant Arts Editor

Upon entering Aaron Miller’s one-man exhibit ART, LOVE, FEAR, LIFE, DEATH, TRASH, currently being diplayed in the James W. Palmer III Gallery, the viewer first sees the titular words individually spelled out in silk flowers of varying colors mounted on the wall.

Bright, distinctive, monochromatic color maintains a dominant presence in the 12 works presented. The colors psychically envelop viewers and thrust them with dilated eyes into a world of self-aware kitsch, which is composed of mixed media where one can explore Miller’s use of two of 20th-century art’s favorite tropes: the found object and pop iconography.

The gallery will host a reception with Miller on Thursday, Feb. 21 at 5 p.m., and the show will continue until March 7.

Marcel Duchamp introduced the found object to the art world in 1913 when he placed a bicycle wheel on a stool and exhibited it. Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art William McManus teaches modern art theory and acknowledges Duchamp as one of the two most significant artists of the last century—with Andy Warhol, the notorious pop artist.

“The use of the found object could be on the one hand appropriating examples from past art history and on the other hand appropriating mass cultural objects and stacking them together to create these more dense or layered meanings,” McManus said. “[This art form has] something to do with the past of one’s professional and aesthetic aspirations, and the present and the past of one’s cultural formation.”

Miller uses objects, which he bought on eBay, and creates contexts to give them new meanings. “Bedfellows” places Bert and an Ernie dolls next to one another in a light blue bed whose size overwhelms them. The piece puts the child’s playthings in a sexually charged environment.

Miller moved to New York City in the early ’80s and began working at the Louis K. Meisel Gallery in downtown Manhattan. In 2005, he decided that he wanted to escape the fast pace and confined spaces of cosmopolitan life.

Poughkeepsie gained his affection, offering him the historically art-inspiring beauty of the Hudson River Valley and still proximal to the American art world’s epicenter. He founded the artist cooperative Gallery and Studio (G.A.S.) in downtown Poughkeepsie to fill a perceived lack of outlets for contemporary art in the area. To pay the bills, he took the job of Student Employment Office Administrative Assistant at Vassar, which is the title about 1,700 students readily ascribe to him.

Typically, Miller’s found objects represent pieces of American pop iconography. The exhibit includes many items from the 1939 musical The Wizard of Oz—Dorothy’s dress, Dorothy’s ruby slippers, even a work entitled “Toto.” Miller used his show to address the questions: “What does it mean to be an American icon? What is American?”

Serious play as a theme dominates Miller’s oeuvre. His work paradoxically presents itself as pure play, yet it radiates a note of gravity: kitsch, but with a meaning.

“These are things that are well-known but not necessarily understood by everybody,” Miller said.

The oxymoron “serious play” extends into the rest of Miller’s work, including the title of his Palmer Gallery exhibition. “The words are universal but also playful,” said Miller. “I want my pieces to help people to question things: assumptions about what something means. Does it have to mean one thing, or can it mean more than one thing at the same time?”

“Bozo, Rocky, and Dorothy,” the center piece of his exhibition, presents three inverted maps of the United States, each a different color from the tricolor, with found objects of American pop iconography placed on top of them: Bozo the clown’s nose, Rocky’s boxer shorts and Dorothy’s ruby slippers. All three maps are placed on the floor in front of large yellow letters reading “Toto.” The piece underscores Miller’s emphasis on twists. Miller referenced pop artist Jasper Johns, who also worked with maps, to explain his intention behind the maps. “As Johns said, it’s something that is looked at but not seen,” Miller explained.

“A lot of people don’t even recognize that those maps are backwards,” he continued. “[The shape is] something that’s so engrained in our minds that you read it as the United States whether it’s forwards or backwards.”

The exhibit has been laid out with a minimalist’s touch such that each piece occupies its own distinct space. Miller’s work relies on concepts of popular culture in order to make its point, and the arrangement of his pieces makes their concept-driven nature more apparent.

“It opens up a space for debate and interaction that can open onto a set of problems that are larger than the figure invoked,” McManus said about the mode of presentation.

McManus added, however, with an air of discouragement, “has bypassed any kind of critical discourse because when anybody with ready means can set up a gallery and start showing artists…then there’s not really any criticality there.”

Miller emphasized that he wanted the viewer to take away from his work whatever she or he desired.
“By making something as personal as possible for me, that’s actually the best way to maybe affect someone else’s life through art,” he said.