Do you notice what I notice / When I amplify the output? … This is how the song entitled “Amplifier” starts. When the band Blumfeld released their second album in 1994, the artist Gerold Miller was in his early 30s – an age when people are generally still open to newer tendencies in pop music.
But of course it remains wild speculation to assume that the muse kissed him while listening to this song and that he came up with the idea for the “amplifier” sculptures that have been present in his work for several years now, yes, that form the center of it. However, he would not be the first. Milan-based design group Memphis got their name when the assembled members heard the Bob Dylan song “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” on the night of its founding. Many artists play music while working in the studio.
Every closed room is a coffin… So it goes on in the text of “Amplifier”. A good reason for outdoor sculptures. So “Amplifier 34” is actually in the garden of the Mies van der Rohe house, “Amplifier 8” in the house.
Miller has had the free-standing sculptures, reminiscent of John McCracken’s geometric minimalism, in his repertoire since 2016. It’s always the same L-shape with added support, which Miller varies solely in scale, material, and finish. “Amplifier 34” (2019) is made of mirror-polished stainless steel and measures an impressive 240 centimeters in height. “Amplifier 8” was made of gold-plated brass in 2016 with a handy height of just 50 centimetres.
Miller also has the “amplifiers” made of aluminum and in painted versions. Red marble versions are brand new to the portfolio. Miller presented them for the first time this year as part of his Gallery Weekend show at Galerie Wentrup. He came across the new material at his second home in Pistoia, Tuscany. There was the idea of placing such a marble “amplifier” in the garden of the Mies van der Rohe house. According to the company, the decision was made “for technical reasons”. The concept now envisages the restriction to the metallic luster of steel and polished gold. This sharpens the view of form and materiality – also of the architecture.
“Above everything is the conceptual approach. It really should be in the center. How do I approach Mies van der Rohe, this task? Via a conceptual track,” says Miller in the video. It will not have escaped him that the floor plan of the Mies van der Rohe house shares the same L-shape as his “amplifiers”.
With its highly polished surface, “Amplifier 34” is also reminiscent of the cross-shaped, high-gloss chrome-plated steel pillars that are only a few centimeters larger and that Mies installed in his famous Barcelona pavilion. Both men undoubtedly share a penchant for surfaces made of precious metal or precious stone.
“This sensual combination of architecture, painting and sculpture…” Miller enthuses in the video. Mies did the architecture and Miller did the sculpture. After the Mies van der Rohe house gave him carte blanche for his second exhibition, the sculptor got help for the painting.
Not that the Miller himself doesn’t also have flat goods for the wall, which you could see at Wentrup in the spring. Among them were two variants that play with the circular shape and are reminiscent of logo designs (e.g. Korean Air). With their color field finishes in Rolls-Royce quality, they radiate a similarly cold perfection as the “amplifiers”. One would not like to call it painting.
But painting should be here. So Miller knocked on the door of Max Frintrop from Düsseldorf. And the up-and-coming artist, who was already forty, didn’t need to be asked twice. Especially since Miller’s noble gesture meant leaving him almost the entire field, i.e. all (three) rooms and all the walls in the house. Miller only wanted to occupy a small corner at the entrance for his handy “Amplifier 8”.
“The room is folded against the wall”, Frintrop called his show somewhat cryptically in contrast to the “amplifiers” simply numbered by Miller. That could also come from a song written by Blumfeld’s singer Jochen Distelmeyer. “Electric Mudd”, “Elli”, “SRV”, “Jimi James” and “Untitled” (It’s better to have loved and lost) are the names of the large formats created especially for the location.
Frintrop created the atelier-fresh works in 50 or more shades of green and above all blue, flowing, dripping, lying on the floor à la Pollock and always in one go – wet on wet, never working on several at the same time, at the same time striving for lightness and precision .
The gestures of the informal, the freedom of abstract expressionism greet with a wink. The possibilities of the painterly are cheerfully explored – in series. A master student of the (once) New Wild and Neo-Expressionist Albert Oehlen was at work here. The contrast to Miller could hardly be greater, not only in terms of the titles.
Some of the works from 2010, which reach into the third dimension of the canvas, represent a certain connection to his sculptural work. Made from poor materials and appearing rather improvised, the contrast prevails here, too. Not only to Miller, also to Mies.
The interactions between the extremely different works of Gerold Miller and Max Frintrop both the effect of the individual works as well as the show as a whole and certainly also the architecture … well: strengthened.
The visitor to the exhibition stands in the garden, surrounds “Amplifier 34”, looks through the large, ordering grid of the window panes of the Mies van der Rohe house at the Frintrop picture, which at 3.30 meters wide is the largest in the world and proclaims the unlimited freedom of painting Show. Frintrop in the exhibition catalogue: “I like landscape formats when they are really monumental, like a cinema screen. Otherwise they look like little TVs to me, I don’t want that.” Do you notice what I notice / When I amplify the output?
