Kirk Miller

FAR Bazaar Project

UBUNTU ("I AM WHAT I AM BECAUSE OF WHO WE ALL ARE" - BOYD VARTY)

Description: In my twenty-five unique 3D printed figurines, ‘box of Buddhas,’ five wooden cubes and gift bag template with redacted religious text, there is no one "selfie” that can be identified as “me.” That which we call the “self” is a mental construct all of us create that tends to be all encompassing. It comes from not only our immediate notion of what we perceive as our self, both physical and mental, but also abstractions of everything we experience, which include both what I think of as myself and what I think of as “other.” It is something that is ongoing and undergoes constant change throughout our life. We believe that it designates something that is real and actually exists, but there is nothing that really exists that corresponds to our notion of self; it is only an idea. It is this “self” that provides us a complete and seamless, albeit distorted, interpretation of our reality.

My practice is a blend of Minimalism and Conceptualism laced with a droll sense of humor and a tendency towards tongue-in-cheek visual puns that still manage to service a desire to investigate existential and ontological concerns. As a conceptual artist, the notions of nothingness (no-thing-ness) and emptiness have comprised a constant area of interest for me. Originally inspired by the absurdist theater of Ionesco and Beckett, in which human existence is shown to have no real meaning or purpose, my early works focused on nothingness as a negation, specifically the negation of death after all meaning has been emptied from life, a simulacrum, an 'exquisite corpse.' However, in my more recent works, like "sacredTextSacredSpace" and "Fragile," my interest in nothingness has evolved to become the nothingness of pure zero and of 'boundless possibility.' Rather than a negation, I now see this 'stripping away' as an opening, a potentiality.

Location: FA32A

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Kirk Miller's education and experience cover a wide spectrum of art and art activity. He has a background in art history, commercial illustration and design, and several years working as a conceptual artist. Mr. Miller received a BA in Art History from the University of California, Berkeley before going on to earn a BFA in Illustration and a MFA in Painting, both from Art Center College of Design. His own work has been exhibited at many national and international locations, including Arena 1 Gallery, "Mary Boone Gallery", Krygier/Landau Contemporary Art, Chapman University, and the Galleria Notturna d'Arte Contemporanea in Milan, Italy. Mr. Miller has taught at Cal State Long Beach, Cal State Northridge, and Pasadena City College, but for the past twenty-eight years he has been on faculty at Cerritos College, instructing survey courses, as well as classes specifically devoted to electronic imaging and installation/experimental art. During his time at Cerritos he has served as art department chair, gallery director, and been awarded the Outstanding Faculty of the Year.