Nicole Miller: The Borrowers

Nicole Miller: The Borrowers
March 19–May 16, 2015
Opening Reception: Thursday, March 19, 6–8PM

Koenig & Clinton is pleased to announce The Borrowers, the gallery’s first exhibition of video works by Los Angeles-based artist Nicole Miller. The Borrowers features three recent single-channel videos played in tandem: David, Ndinda, and Anthony. Their subjects as their namesakes, the works spotlight unique individuals, set against an ambiguous backdrop, whose performances employ representation, appropriation, and theater as tools for reconstituting that which has been lost.

Implementing a method common to the artist’s practice, Miller devised a controlled narrative structure for David, Ndinda, and Anthony within which her subjects were free to extemporize at their discretion. Whether through storytelling, improvisation, or mimicry, these unscripted moments enabled access to authenticity during performance.

In David, a man stands askew in front of a mirror while recounting the story of random violence that resulted in the loss of his left arm. Simultaneously, he gesticulates to generate a false image of his missing appendage in his own reflection — an exercise that relieves the pain of phantom limb. Ndinda introduces a narrator who intersperses dialogue with unprompted eruptions of roaring laughter. An instructor of therapeutic Hasya Yoga (laughing yoga), Ndinda utilizes the same method of performance for the camera that she offers in her classes, triggering a parallel cathartic response in the video’s viewers.

Framed by theatrical spotlights and crimson drapes, Anthony Aquarius takes center stage as a Jimi Hendrix impersonator. For the duration of Anthony, the musician performs “Ain’t Got No/I Got Life”, two songs originally composed for the musical Hair that were combined and made famous by Nina Simone. The singer first lists material items she does not possess (“I ain’t got no home/ain’t got no shoes”), then follows with attributes of her physical vitality (“Got my liver, got my blood/I’ve got life”). Haunting the present with vestiges of the past, Anthony offers its audience a borrowed persona, whose body signifies both presence and absence: the image of a lost figure, extolling the power of physicality through song.

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: Artists’ Film International: Nicole Miller, Ballroom Marfa; The Conductor, High Line Channel 22, New York City; Believing is Seeing, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Death of a School, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneve; and The Conductor, LAXART, Los Angeles. Miller has also participated in prominent group exhibitions such as: Made in L.A. biennial, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2012); Dallas Biennale, Dallas Contemporary (2012); and The Bearden Project, Studio Museum in Harlem (2011). Her work is represented in public collections including The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. Miller has been the recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant (2013); the Artadia Award (2013); and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award (2012), among others. The artist lives and works in Los Angeles.

For further information please contact info@koenigandclinton.com or call (212) 334-9255. Hours of operation are Tuesday–Saturday, 11AM–6PM and by appointment.