Costello’s Critique on 13
Kevin Costello reviews SARTQ: Thirteen http://bit.ly/t5iV3W.
Daniel Miller, like [Joseph] Arnegger, revisits the recent past of art history to hold a mirror up to the present. But for Miller it is the recent past of video art. His “untitled” continuous video loop has the feel of the early days of this medium. The quiet, Zen like simplicity of works by Terry Fox and the Neo-Dada video antics of Vito Acconci from the 1970’s come to mind. Miller has a grasp on the grainy off kilter hand-held auteur tradition that Fox and Acconci personify. Miller’s video is a montage of two related events: a man’s hand nervously fingering a table top or ballet bar and a male and female dancer at times leaping or moving through a blocking out of a pas de deux. The work has a feeling rather than a clear narrative in the commercial sense of film. There is no sound and the large scale of the projected image as well as its imagery absorbs the viewer, as would a romantic 19Th century painting. The silence underscores the careful pace of the work and acuity of the artist coming to terms with (for him) a new medium of expression.
The show will be up until January 7, 2012 http://bit.ly/tcr8Xa
Tags: 19Th century painting, daniel miller, Kevin Costello, Neo-Dada, Terry Fox, Vito Acconci, Zen