Paul D. Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky, at Annina Nosei - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Paul D Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, is arguably the greatest in quantity famous DJ in the of recent origin York music scene. He has organized and participated in various high-profile Happenings, make an incision in two albums -- imagine an amalgamation of trip-hop, hip-hop, ambient, brake and dub, called "illbient" -- and has written with great erudition and mode of expression on the intersection of music and other aspects of today's agriculture for both music and art magazines, including Parkett and Spin.

When I read last summer in a Harper's Bazaar profile about the forthcoming solo exhibition of Miller (his first) at Annina Nosei, a filmic anecdote came to mind@ it's the spectacle in Julian Schnabel's film Basquiat where Basquiat nonchalantly numbers Warhol that he's been invited to DJ at the Palladium. The point made is that Basquiat had arrived as an artist. clan even cared to know what his favorite records were. My suspicion: now that DJ Spooky has arrived, clan even care to know what his be in possession of art works might look like.

With the display titled "Death in Light of the Phonograph: Excursions into the Pre-Linguistic," Miller delivered a filled package. In the first of sum of two units rooms, an installation titled The Doors of Perception, Miller enlisted the whole of the gallery space as a compositional frame -- a strategy similar to many ambient circumstances but pointedly more restrained and self-conscious. Four speakers sat in the room's corners, playing a uninjured track made for the exhibition (the CD was available for purchase from one side the gallery). A silver tape cassette with a diagonal golden and black emergency decal upon it was mounted on each wall. Symmetrically placed upon the imaginary X made when connecting the opposing corners of the sweep were four irregular tubular carbonized iron constructions; then, moving towards the center four places of overlapping, rusted security window gates were suspended from the ceiling. In the center of the gallery were sum of two units rebar "ladders" that formed an inverted V above a nomadic DJ kit: digital sampling preamp, sum of two units more small speakers, and a turnable spinning and forever caught in a reaching far down groove, the sound evoking the drip of a leaky faucet in digital. reverb

As with many other theatrical art installations, comparisons immediately insinuateed themselves: the piece as a whole evok flat-flooted Futurist stage design fitted with low-budget Mad Max supports But what was compelling in the installation was the way Miller foregrounded the temporal dimension inherent in the perception of material objects; walking end it, you felt yourself moving, heard yoursel hearing. This looked to be Miller's focus, and justified his interdisciplinary experiment.

The tactic backfired, however, in the gallery's next to the first room, titled The Viral Sonata, where four "8-Ball" bean bag chairs were arranged before several oxymoronically tidy wall assemblages made of road detritus: battered street signs, fractured bicycle parts, deformed mtftres frames, graffiti-scarred cardboard and individual cracked Bulova clockface were in the mix. upon the walls were also four framed music sheets, marked not by means of traditional notation but rather by dint of silver and black spray paint, puddl strok and splattered. The comfortable chairs appear to beed to generously encourage a studious and meditative experience before these curiously expressionless expressionist works -- still they actually served to cushion the fall of those numbed through the prospect.

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