Navot Miller

Enamored with life’s fleeting moments of passion, heartache, and banality, Navot Miller (b. 1991, Shadmot Mehola, Israel) positions his practice as a record of it all.

Drawing from the flow of moments and memories in his own life, Miller records the landscapes, architecture, and people he sees with fresh, inquisitive eyes. To capture these moments, Miller takes hundreds of photos as they pass, revisiting them later as the source material for his paintings. This part of his process-the transfer of composition from screen to canvas-is crucial, as it lends itself to a flatness of form, which Miller enhances with a vibrant, highly contrasted palette of solid pinks, yellows, blues, and greens. The forms that emerge are sectioned into flat blocks of color, punctuated intermittently by elements of richly blended paint that accentuate such elements as hair, skin, or flowing tapestries.

The artist’s experiences as a gay, Jewish immigrant living in Germany figure prominently into his painting. Growing up in a rural Israeli village, Miller found it difficult to express himself and his identity as a young gay person. Upon relocating to Berlin as an adult, he found a community of creatives who opened up new possibilities for self-expression. In Berlin, Miller began to study architecture, but found himself filling his portfolio with drawn depictions of queer love, and eventually switched courses to pursue painting. His background in architecture, however, permeates his compositions, which are filled with dramatic arches and elaborate door and window frames. Within these grandiose spaces, Miller locates men loving, swimming, and resting, many of whom sport peyes, the curled sidelocks worn by many religious Jewish men. The artist celebrates these scenes with a brazenly colorful palette, an exclamation of joy and undeniable presence.

Text courtesy of Yossi Milo, NY.