Sam Brooks

Chris Millar transforms paint and pop culture into artistic philosophy

Looking at one of Chris Millar’s paintings for the first time, it’s difficult to decipher what you’re seeing. At first glance, it’s just a chaotic jumble of images, slogans and words. But upon closer inspection, you begin to notice things — faces, cartoons, pop culture references — each item carefully selected to fit into an intrinsic narrative thought up in bits and pieces by Millar, and made almost entirely out of layers of paint.

A collection of nine paintings and two sculptures, The Untimely Transmogrification of the Problem is more than just the Calgary artist’s latest work. It’s a mini-retrospective of his life, a collection that’s been eight years in the making — a lengthy production process that arises not by choice, but necessity. Each painting and sculpture takes anywhere from a few weeks to several months to complete, as Millar applies layer upon layer of paint onto a sheet of plastic, slowly crafting a 3D image. The finished product is deceiving, admits guest curator Nancy Tousley, as the use of masking to create edges on the surface creates the illusion of a collage.

“People look at it and they think that he’s made a collage — that he’s cut out existing images and then pasted them on a surface,” says Tousley, who has followed Millar’s work for years as an arts journalist. “You can see why they might think that, but it’s all done with paint.”

But no matter what Millar’s projects come to look like in the end, they start first and foremost with a story. The process of creating the narratives, which Millar likens to a “really slow-paced improv sketch” starts off with an initial idea and characters, to which Millar slowly adds as he works. Never pre-determining the ending, it’s not uncommon for Millar’s last step of a project to be his initial idea, as is the case with 370H55V, the exhibition’s largest sculpture and Millar’s biggest creation to date.

“It’s funny, when you think of doodling, usually you think of drawing something on a notepad when you’re on the phone or in class. But I kind of see this as sculptural doodling,” muses Millar. “It’s not really based around some big, bold concept — it’s just me using my hands. I think maybe when you don’t have an outcome in mind, it’s when you get some of the most bizarre outcomes.”

The stories behind many of Millar’s pieces might easily be described as bizarre, to say the least. With narrative themes ranging from spoofs of the sitcom Frasier to the creation of a fictitious heavy metal band called Face Spider, Millar’s work reflects an imagination that just won’t quit. While these pieces evoke the bright, fantastical feel that so much of Millar’s work embodies, there are also more sombre pieces, stories inspired by personal revelations that Millar himself has difficulty talking about.

“The subject matter is all over the place. (Tousley) sums it up by saying the work is about ‘human folly,’ which I would say is a totally keen way of describing it,” Millar says. “Humans make mistakes and try to succeed in their tasks or lives, but there’s just something very human when they fail. I think there is beauty in failure. So although these are not artistic failures, I think they represent some personal failures of the people playing out the stories. They also represent a lot of people making art or trying to be creative and falling short and feeling artistically impotent.”

Millar’s work is littered with both subtle and obvious suggestions of these ideas, though it may be difficult to find them at first glance. Each piece in the exhibit is so wrought with
detail that handheld magnifying glasses are made available for those who want a closer look. It’s an important addition to the exhibit, since it’s impossible to fully grasp the details of the paintings and sculptures until you’ve seen them up close with your own eyes.

Even when you do, the risk of losing the story in the muddle of images, figurines and references is all too real. Millar himself admits that some of his vision may get lost in translation when people view the exhibit for the first time. As for the curator, Tousley believes that there’s a clear story inside each work that makes up The Untimely Transmogrification of the Problem — it simply requires a little imaginative thinking on our part to see it.

“It’s about the way we live and the way we relate to each other as people,” Tousley says. “In some cases, these are very foolish people running around doing very crazy things, but in the end, there is the suggestion that we are redeemed by the power of the human imagination. And that’s what we really see at work in here.”

© Gateway Student Journalism Society — All Rights Reserved