Gerold Miller

total object 30, 2004

Gerold Miller is trying to formulate a broadened concept of pictorial quality with his work group total object, which is not clearly to define neither as painting nor as object: it is frameless and functions as a frame equally. The frontal orientation of total object accords with current visual culture’s tendencies towards perfect surfaces. The monochrome black gloss paint reflects ephemeral impressions, the space and fragments of the daily flood of images, which the artist cannot influence, and does not want to either. The wall sculpture can be interpreted in various ways, it functions as a ‘zero’ as well as a purely aesthetic form. Thus total object reformulates a paradox typical of the art of the 1960s, when reduction and excess, anti-illusionism and illusionism became opposite poles in dealing with the picture, at the zenith of Minimal and Pop Art.