Tribute to David Miller

May 7 - July 16, 2016

David Miller - Bathtub, 2004

Galerie de l'Ancienne Poste is particularly pleased to present this tribute to British-born ceramist David Miller, to whom it devoted two exhibitions, in 2002 and 2007, which was the artist's last exhibition before his sudden death in January 2008.
Born in London in 1942, David Miller studied sculpture at the London School of Art, then graphic design in Brighton. After graduating, he turned to ceramics. From 1970 to 1989, he taught ceramics in England, Brazil, Canada, the USA...
It's a delight to lose oneself in the intricate web of his graphic games - these black tracings that stand out against the torrential invasion of bright colors, like so many symbols of creative vitality and communicative joy. It's hard not to think of Pollock or New York graffiti artists when taking a closer look at his decors... The exhibition presents some thirty works produced between 1989 and 2007, testifying to the career of an accomplished artist.

Someone who has known no limits....

David Miller was a man who crossed borders. And not just in the geographical sense, as he had done with his move from England to France. As talented as he was in sculpture, painting and ceramics, rigid art categories or classification into "modern" or "traditional" boxes were no contradiction for him, no hierarchies or incompatibilities. He, who had once studied sculpture and ceramics in London, and had gone on to study graphic design in Brighton, was as much modern as traditional, an artist of the applied arts as of the free arts. He was equally at home in genres and techniques, which he exercised with sovereignty and which he was able to link together quite seamlessly. It was in a variety of fields that he found his own unique path. After his first pieces, low-temperature salt-fired vessels with lightly engraved decorations, around 1980 in France he began working in raku, containers and non-containers decorated with a brush, using a very particular gesture. He then moved on to wood-fired pieces. At the same time, he began a fine production of glazed earthenware, covered in loose paint, with a luminous, colorful decor, as artistic as it is traditional, as absolute as it is functional. His work has always been defined by an inimitable, distinctive aesthetic, and his exhibitions were inevitably highlights in the gallery world.
Marianne Heller,
Galerie Heller, Heidelberg, Germany. In David Miller AwardFebruary 2015.