Description

Harland Miller. High on Hope. 2014. Edition of 50. 15 Colour silk screenprint on Somerset Satin Tub Sized 410gsm. 58 11/16 x 43 5/16 in. (149 x 110 cm). £3,000 inc VAT. White Cube is delighted to launch a new print by Harland Miller in conjunction with Frieze week. This detailed 15 colour silkscreen print by Harland Miller is based on the artist's series of fictional Penguin book-cover paintings. In these works, Miller paints old colour-block covers, used by the publishing house to denote genres, with himself as the author and deadpan, humorous titles. Presented as a three-dimensional, well worn object, the paintings seem to synchronise notions of identification through ownership as well as the promise of fantasy in their two-dimensional image. While detached and conceptual they make reference to the language of Abstract Expressionism, and present their graphic style and literary subject with an expressive painterly style. Miller is adept at using both text and image to create enjoyable slippages that delight in their often dark humour and, in this work, the words 'high on hope' could suggest its rhyming alternative 'high on dope'. Equally, a possible misspelling of the phrase 'high on hop', a precursor to the well known and somewhat irritatingly upbeat phrase 'high on life'. Although Miller has infused his text with a pathetic yet empathetic sense of doubt, the picture's upwardly mobile typography and skipping Penguin logo seem to counter this, presenting a light-hearted and positive picture of man's inability to stop dreaming.