Miles Coolidge

Artist’s Statement

Since I began showing artwork publicly in 1994, I have focused on representing phenomena that blur the distinction between landscape and architecture. I look to the subject matter for suggestions for the form of the artwork, and to photographic imaging technologies for rendering techniques that allow us to see in these subjects things the eye cannot perceive in familiar modes of embodied perception.

I have found it increasingly important to include photography itself as a subject of my work. Unlike painting and music, photography’s history is identifiable only with history since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The history of the medium is characterized by the same pattern of flux and churn found in the broader context that surrounds it, and of which it is an integral part. I intend my current work to negotiate a path that is fully aware and responsive to this history, all the while relying on the photograph’s ability to freeze time, so we can feel our internal sense of being push up against it, if only for an instant.

Website: milescoolidge.net

Biography

Select Solo Exhibitions from 2009-2013

2011
ACME. Los Angeles

Select Group Exhibitions from 2009-2013

2012
Making Sense, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

2011
WP9, Night Gallery, Los Angeles

2010
Reflection: 15 Years, Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York, NY
Der Rote Bulli, NRW-Forum Düsseldorf, Germany [catalogue]

2009
Surface Tension: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

EDUCATION

Postgraduate Fellowship, 1993-4
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, class of Bernd Becher

MFA, 1992
California Institute of the Arts

BA, 1986
Harvard University, Visual and Environmental Studies