The Sensual Indulgence of Liz Miller's "Proliferative Calamity"

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Liz Miller’s exhibition “Proliferative Calamity” at Hawthorn Contemporary in Walker’s Point

There’s something oddly refreshing about attending an art reception in Milwaukee on the same Saturday night that the orgy of commerce and decadence at Art Basel Miami has reached climax. Between reports from the front lines in the form of Instagram messages made poolside from the Delano Hotel, I had the very different pleasure of engaging deeply with a single work of art (and several supplemental drawings) in an intimate setting, attended mostly by local acquaintances, with the only distraction being the management of my bulky winter coat.

Very different, to be sure; however, Liz Miller’s exhibition “Proliferative Calamity,” running through Feb. 9 at Hawthorn Contemporary in Walker’s Point, presents its own proprietary bacchanal of sensual indulgence. Miller’s work strategically fills the entire 500-square foot gallery with the same level of consideration a painter might fill the imagined space of an empty canvas. One might say that Miller paints with sculpture, building spatial relationships into cohesive site-specific installations that fill her spaces with form and color.

We have the luxury, at Hawthorn, to stand back and see the sculptural forest before penetrating into its trees and enjoying those eponymous calamities as they proliferate into life. Miller’s installation is intricate and sprawling, making it accessible on many levels. Composed mainly of “soft” media, like cut paper and draped fabric, it seduces easily enough through raw materiality and vivid color. But it’s the unexpected languages she merges in the show that dial up the sophistication and rigor. Organic crunchiness meets opulent baroque glamour; abstract forms mix with vaguely recognizable objects; natural colors bleed into the loudest artificial hues. And, somehow, all these would-be oppositions integrate seamlessly.

From the entryway, a series of sculptural bunches build from green tendrils and warm brown fronds at their bases and twist upward, snaking under the gaudiest metallic copper and lavender fabric. It could be a small tropical island in drag, or a very glammed-up Daphne trying to escape Apollo. The forms are everything and nothing, nimbly dancing on the line between representation and abstraction, encouraging interpretation like a 3D Rorschach.

Along the South wall of the gallery, a series of lemon-yellow chiffon-wrapped platforms dangle from PVC pipes, like American Doll-sized canopy beds. The pipes’ juts form clusters of cut paper vegetation on the wall. As strangely specific cultural objects ensconced by manicured nature, they have a little of Fragonard’s famous painting The Swing in them. Naughty and innocent; substantial and frivolous. Fragonard’s type of Rococo extravagance was, until very recently, registered as insipid and vacuous to most of the establishment; however, what was once a vapid 18th century teen soap opera has come to seem a little more Felliniesque. Miller’s work, too, brings a certain effervescence and flare that is necessary at the moment. Still, couched in all that fizz and fun, is a palpable libidinous energy.

Aspects of Miller’s work also bring to mind contemporary installation artists such as Jessica Stockholder, Polly Apfelbaum, and Judy Pfaff, which is pretty good associative company. Miller has her own voice, though, which shouts loud and clear enough. Her installations are the very embodiment of that old maxim by Jasper Johns about making: “Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.” But there’s a little more to it than that: If applied with a certain willful touch, those somethings will metamorphose into other somethings, which, finally, will feel and appear conjured rather than crafted by human hands. In “Proliferative Calamity” the physical becomes phenomenal; the material becomes almost extraterrestrial, as Miller spins her mundane somethings piece-by-piece into many magical something elses and transforms Hawthorn Contemporary into something elsewhere. Which happens to be a fine and exotic alternative to Miami Beach.