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John Millei at Ace

Art in America, Nov, 2006 by David Ebony

In this recent exhibition, "Procession," John Millei presented 114 medium-size abstract oilon-canvas paintings and numerous small ceramic sculptures arranged on four chest-high wooden plinths. These ostensibly minimalist works were inspired in equal measure by Giotto's Arena Chapel frescoes in Padua and by Giorgio Morandi's still lifes in Bologna's Morandi Museum, paintings viewed by Millei on a trip to Italy some years ago. The 48-year-old Los Angeles artist often works in series, and this time his project seems particularly obsessive. Uniform in size (20 by 24 inches), the canvases, produced over the past few years, were hung in a single row lining every gallery of Ace's sprawling Beverly Hills space. Despite similarities of format and image, individual pieces are carefully considered. Remarkably, the works never seem repetitive.

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The canvases feature compositions that center on two or more vertically elongated, irregular trapezoids nearly uniform in size and shape (about 8 inches high, 1 or 2 inches wide at the top and 3 inches wide at the bottom) but greatly varied in color and texture. In each painting, the elements appear side-by-side or sometimes overlapping along the bottom half of the canvas, like abstracted figures. They hint at the solemn processions in Giotto's mural cycle as well as recall the austere rows of ceramic vessels that Morandi employs.

Some of Millei's brilliant color schemes are redolent of Giotto's luminous tones, while the more earthen hues echo those of Morandi. The colors in Millei's Procession 109, for example, muted taupe in the upper portion and pale chartreuse, bark brown and beige of the overlapping trapezoids in the lower section, seem directly transposed from a Morandi painting. Procession 106, with its luminous lapis lazulitoned background and golden yellow and white elements, pays similar homage to Giotto.

Installed in the center of the largest gallery, the ceramic pieces, 7-inch-high, freestanding thin rectangular wedges of white terracotta, correspond to the repeated geometric shapes in the paintings. Arranged on the plinths in groups of six or more, the ceramics are engaging objects on their own, but their primary function here is to play counterpoint to the elements animating the paintings. Rendering these shapes in sculptural form literally adds another dimension to Millei's already ambitious and impressive commingling of early Renaissance, modernist and minimalist visual vocabularies.

John Millei at Ace

Art in America, Nov, 2006 by David Ebony

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