CHRIS MILLAR: The Untimely Transmogrification of the Problem

Chris Millar entices us into his own private universe with a myriad of wondrous tiny details and then holds onto our amazed attention as he unfolds his outrageous tall tales and fantastical yarns. The Calgary artist is a natural-born storyteller. What is this seeming apparition hovering like a space ship in the air? Who is this multi-headed monster whose oddly small feet are clad in rubber boots? Millar sprinkles his sculptures, which are made almost entirely out of paint, with visual clues to the questions of who and what, and even what might happen next, if their frozen moment in time were to melt. His paintings, on the other hand, which began in the panel-page format of the comic book, are dense mixtures of images and words in which everything happens at once.

The Untimely Transmogrification of the Problem features Millar’s largest sculpture to date, 370H55V (2011), and surrounds it with works made since 2004. To transmogrify is “to change or alter greatly and often with grotesque or humorous effect,” an apt description of what Millar does to everyday reality and, also, to the practice of painting. The exhibition of nine paintings and two sculptures demonstrates to the eye how Millar coaxed a two- dimensional painting surface into fully three-dimensional, freestanding structures made of paint. As in one of Millar’s works, which speak both to the human imagination and to human folly, the story is there to be seen.

Chris Millar was born in Claresholm, Alberta, in 1977, and grew up in Sherwood Park. He completed a fine arts diploma at GrantMacEwanCommunity College in 1998, and a bachelor of fine arts in painting at the AlbertaCollege of Art & Design in 2000. His work will be part of the exhibition Oh, Canada at MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts, opening in May, 2012.