Stool

Miles Coolidge lives in Los Angeles, he studied in Dusseldorf with Bernd Becher 1993-94 after having graduated MFA from CalArts, Valencia 1992. He has been in numerous solo and group shows since he graduated in both North America and Europe. He teaches at the University of California, Irvine.

Coolidge works in series, as with ‘Street furniture’, and frequently in grids. He is indebted as much to the Bechers as he is to Ed Ruscha and the laconic humour of the latter is always evident in his work. The pictures in the ‘Street furniture’ series are of abandoned household furnishings which the artist photographs frontally, positioned as he found them, their geometry aligned to the camera’s image rectangle. Each photograph is taken with minimal intervention and scaled to the size of the original object. Sarah Valdez, in ‘Art in America’ October 2007 described the unwanted ‘bittersweet and slightly humorous’ furnishings an investigation of ‘the transformation of waste; Coolidge’s upended desk chair redoubles on Duchamp’s bicycle-wheel readymade. These pictures are part of an ongoing project by the artist ‘to undermine the resignation and melancholy photography imparts to the world.’