LOS ANGELES—John Miller’s conceptual practice spans more than three decades, and for “The Natural Order,” his current exhibition at Patrick Painter’s Michigan Avenue galleries in Los Angeles, the New York– and Berlin-based artist continues to mine the territory that has made his art both of and about the everyday, while showcasing his wry sense of humor and almost clinical analysis of kitsch.

Best known for his assemblages from the 1980s and ’90s, which are covered in a goo resembling excrement, in his recent work Miller has replaced the scatological brown impasto with imitation gold leaf, covering worthless knickknacks like plastic guitars and toy guns in an act that elevates the original objects into art, turning dollar store detritus into bling. When he displayed gold-coated works at Metro Pictures and Friedrich Petzel in New York in 2008, before the global recession hit, their shimmery surface had a seductive quality; now, in the harsh light of our new economic reality, they can also be interpreted as a critique of our overindulgent ways. At Patrick Painter, decorative wallpaper and several large rugs complement the Midas-touched bric-à-brac, suggesting a minimal, high-end Ikea showroom minus the furniture, in another comment on our voracious consumer culture and the commodification of art.

Also on display is Miller’s photographic series “Middle of the Day,” which captures run-of-the-mill people, buildings, and street scenes where nothing out of the ordinary occurs in shots taken between noon and 2 p.m. (hence the series' title). In Open Diary (detail) Untitled (08-03-08) (2008), he focuses his lens on two erotic beach towels offered for sale in the town of Felanitx in the southeast of Majorca, Spain — one depicting a man and woman in a lusty pose, the other showing two women dressed in police fetish attire. Such tacky items may not appeal to everyone, but, as in Open Diary (detail) Untitled (09-27-07) (2007), featuring a McDonalds restaurant in Fukuoka, Japan, Miller seems to be arguing that however tasteless or banal, these elements are still integral to society as we know it and, as such, cannot be dismissed.

Below, Miller suggests more to see in Los Angeles.


1. Dan Graham: Beyond at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, through May 25

“Long overdue, this is the first survey of an artist whose work brings conceptual art, design, music, and architecture into a self-reflexive constellation. Moreover, Graham is his own best critic. Be sure to read his essay ‘Art as Design, Design as Art’ when you see this show.”

2. Franz West: To Build a House You Start with the Roof: Work, 1972–2008 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, through June 7

“A virtuoso of papier-mâché. West’s sensibility is quintessentially Austrian in that it flouts the false dichotomy between fine and applied art.”

3. Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures 1945–1989 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, through April 19

“When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, East German academics and intellectuals found that their credentials disappeared overnight. History, as we ordinarily know it, is written by the victors. Among other things, this exhibition suggests how dominant ideology circumscribes art historical legitimacy.”

4. Jutta Koether: Sovereign Women in Painting at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, through April 4

“Koether’s para-painting closely calibrates the difference between the artificial and the social. Every one of her artworks is also a banner.”

5. Francis Picabia: Paintings and Works on Paper at Patrick Painter, through April 25



“Picabia’s work undermines the assumption that an artist’s oeuvre is necessarily a cohesive body of work. Even so, what might link his machine drawings to genre painting? Perhaps the pictorial itself is a kind of machine.”