Bernie Miller

Monument(s) of the Moment

October 12 - November 10

Monuments of the Moment (2007)

The three new works in Monuments of the Moment continue the Collision Monument series. The objects have the same conceptual basis in that they are compositions marking events significant for consumer culture. The proposal boards for these works have been replaced with rendered views of the proposed monuments installed at each of their respective sites. The rendered views do not have the same extensive explanatory function as the proposal boards of the first three works in the series.

The works titled VAL, Edina, and Hearthless respectively mark the following events: The formulation of the “Nine American Lifestyles” (VAL being the Stanford Research Institute acronym for Values and Lifestyles) which begat ‘lifestyle’ advertising; The first indoor mall designed by Victor Gruen at Edina Minnesota; And, the offer of a free television in lieu of the standard issue fireplace with each new home in Levittown, Pennsylvania.

Collision Monuments (2004)

The Collision Monument series was developed after I had discovered a series of charts in a reference book : Architectural Graphic Standards. The charts are used in sun-shade studies; Through graphic means the charts allow one to establish the altitude and azimuth of the sun for any moment of the year. Knowing that, at the equator at midday, a perpendicular stick has no shadow because it is aligned parallel to the sun’s rays I realized that anywhere at any time an object so aligned would have no shadow; I visualized this as a collision: The object into its shadow; producing a marker of a unique moment within a year.

When combining a time marker with the idea of a surveyor’s monument or even personal markers or monuments such as plaques or graveyard monuments with the mundane objects of consumer culture, a system of commemorating marketing advances and at the same time marking the site of loss became possible.

Innovations or discoveries such as the use of light in the retail environment, the formula for the length of mall ways, the use of large scale photography in point of purchase display were commemorated in the first of the Collision Monuments.

Each of the Collision Monument works are comprised of a sculptural piece, two presentation boards and an accompanying text. The format mimics a typical required response to a ‘Request for Proposals’ (RFP) for architectural and public art competitions: A model, a technical specification board; The second board would have rendered views of the proposed work in situ.

The series Collision Monuments are preceded by a number of works that are also meditations on consumer culture; One series, a gallery exhibition and two temporary outdoor public artworks come immediately to mind.

Cornucopia (1994)

A temporary (Fall, Winter months) installation at The Toronto Sculpture Garden. Using the pretext of a garden in the Fall becoming winter Season. A bounteous plenitude of a strange and toxic looking harvest tumbles forth from a funnel/horn with decidedly proto-Modernist overtones. Aluminum I-Beam construction, back-lit photo and polyethylene drums and bins bring the imagery up to contemporary advertising standards. A text which accompanies the installation deliberates over tropes of abundance used variously as either Utopian (i.e. through earthly labours) or Paradisical (through the grace of larger forces).

Mirror Machine Series (1994)

A series in which consumer items are used to mimic heroic gestures of the Modernist aesthetic. The works refer by series title to my initial thinking on the Modernist validation of one term(production) at the expense of the devaluation of a second term(consumption) in the opposing terms: Production/Consumption. The works are meant to present one view in principal approach and then dissemble in subsequent views; By which I mean: when first seen they seem to be abstract assemblages, it quickly becomes clear that these abstractions are composed of readily available consumer items

New from Nowhere (1991)

This piece was part of a group exhibition called Crossroads; works were installed at various sites throughout the campus of York University. The exhibition marked the occasion of the opening of several architectural additions and adjustments to the Master Plan of the University. My construction was sited in the main entrance common. It was meant to comment on the Post-Modern facelift to high Modernist Design of this suburban greenfields campus. As well as wall-papering over a very Heroic arch and ramp arrangement which marked the central building designed by John Parkin, the University was encouraged by a very favourable market study to include a shopping mall building into the new master plan. Using an all weather pergola as mallway this covered walkway delivered the student body to the destination shopping facility; The student body was treated as a captive market due to the distance to off-campus retail. With this work I began to examine my unconscious Modernist morality with regards consumption and production.

The Modernist references, particularly Constructivism, although more evident in the precedents above are still subtlety present in the Collision Monuments, often through colour palette but most certainly in the angularity of the interpenetrating primary forms.

To render assemblies of consumer objects in the aesthetic of heroic Modernism is to revisit an aesthetic which gave positive valuation to the productive apparatus; We are privileged now, at the present moment to look upon the results of Modernism as a process rather than as a purely aesthetic gesture.