Jonathan is a painter and writer both of theoretical essays and fiction.
Jonathan Miles has exhibited in White Columns (New York), Venster Museum (Rotterdam), Gallery House, Riverside Gallery, Civic Room, Lychee One and DomoBaal Gallery (all London). He studied at Slade School of Art (1969–73) and in the early 1980s, he was the London Editor of ZG Magazine (London and New York). Recent publications include catalogue essays for Enrico David, Haris Epaminonda, Daniel Cramer, Akiko Takizawa, Mustafa Hulusi, Lu Chao, Tian Zhu, Celia Hempton, Bai Ming, Miho Sato, Philip Caramazza, Ailbhe Ní Bhriain and texts for Material Magazine (Los Angeles) and Undo (Cyprus). He is on the Editorial Board of Material Magazine, Los Angeles.
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Practice
Jonathan Miles’ exhibitions invariably consist of a combination of short stories combined with a series of paintings. Fiction is employed as a means of disturbing the subject position of the paintings in ways that do not allow the spectator to settle on any given truth.
Jonathan Miles has recently been working on two main projects. The first is a work called Addiction: Exscription consists of a short novel (50,000 words) and a series of a thousand small paintings. Each of the two components could be understood as a single entity but equally they might be considered as being linked. The second stage of this project will involve the construction of a body of work that emerges from the two main fictional characters of the novel.
The second project is a series of small reliefs that have a fictional setting in the 1930s. Stylistically, they combine both Art Deco and Constructivist rhetoric without being either. Aesthetically, they might be understood as impossible objects, strange exiles of a world that never materialised.
Publications, exhibitions, other outcomes
Selected Essays
Miles, J. (2017) Lu Chao: Wandering in the Strange, London: Rosenfeld Porcini
Miles, J. (2017) Essay in: Enrico David, London: Michael Werner
Miles, J. (2014) Essay in: Enrico David, London: Michael Werner
Miles, J. (2013) Essay in: Enrico David, London: Michael Werner
Miles, J. (2012) 'Fine Art and Research' in: Dombois, F., Bauer, U., Mareis, C. and Schwab, M. (eds) Intellectual Birdhouse, London: Koenig Books, 217–27
Lectures
Miles, J. (2017) Online Lectures, L-Arts, Beijing
