THE LOST COAST

In celebrating Bergamot Station’s 25-Year Anniversary, we are excited to present the work of Greg Miller and Nick Hunt, two California artists whose work embodies boldly personal journeys. They also represent a bookend celebration of “firsts” for the gallery. Greg Miller was the first artist to exhibit when we opened William Turner Gallery in Venice in 1991 and Nick Hunt is the latest, showing here for the first time with this debut exhibition.

While both artists diverge stylistically, their work draws upon similar romantic elements of their western roots. 

Greg Miller grew up in 50’s -60’s Sacramento, inspired by the rush of billboards, posters, ads and text that shaped the flat delta landscapes and pulp fiction images of his youth. Layer upon layer of images, one billboard or poster slapped over the next, formed a sort cultural geology, where the passage of time might jumble, conceal and reveal an archeology of images, their stories hidden & hinted at in the remaining fragments. 

Labeled a “neo-pop” and “post-pop” artist by such critics as Donald Kuspit and Peter Frank, Miller does indeed draw from pop-cultural imagery that saturated American consciousness during the 1950’s and 1960’s. It was a time when advertising and text became indelibly encrypted into our experience of everyday life. Life as “advertised” and life as “lived” became insuperably intertwined on the pages of “LIFE” and “LOOK” magazines, on television shows, commercials, billboards, hotel signs, romance novels and even matchbook covers as never before. Miller’s paintings excavate this imagery and often appear as unreconstructed fragments of these signs, drips, patterns and phrases. 

Miller’s work is featured in numerous museum and private collections, including those of the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation, and Charles Saatchi Foundation. 

Greg Miller, DREAM, Acrylic, Collage Paper, Resin on panel, 48"x48"

Nick Hunt, grew up in in Newport Beach in the 80’s and early 90’s.  As Hunt states, “It was an unknown area to a lot of the world. Development was in progress, but at that point in time it was still mostly open land, populated with surfers and desert-beach dreamers. My work is inspired by this desert-ocean dangerous allure.” 

Hunt’s work, while abstract, conjures a sense of history - both in their Light and Space influences and in the the rough beauty of the objects themselves.  The scumbled, dented, sometimes bullet riddled surfaces reveal layers of color, painted on metal, and hint at a romantic complexity beneath the glossy enameled surfaces. 

Hunt spent a lot of time in Mexico as a boy, where he got to know Billy Al Bengston, Peter Alexander, Chuck Arnoldi, and Laddie John Dill, who would come down to visit his father’s house on the Sea of Cortez. “I think our unspoken love for this place was what originally bonded us. The open spaces, the danger, the adventure, the feelings of being lost while finding yourself and being perfectly at ease with the nothingness that surrounds you. The undeniable beauty in a place with such minimal resources was captivating.”

That same feeling of exploration and adventure is what drew Hunt to California Art at a very early age. “The at times dangerous exploration of materials and search for the unknown possibilities of beauty - like Chuck with the chainsaw, Billy with his Dentos, Peter with resin and Laddie with sand and light.” 

“Since I was a kid, the idea of being an artist, because of the artists I knew and admired, was not always the most glamorous. You made art because it was all you wanted and could do. So being an artist in California came with a sense of prideful hopelessness. It’s obviously changed now, but that sense of undeniable purpose in an area that seemed lost to the rest of the world inspired me as something wonderful, meaningful, and for me.” 

Nick Hunt, Is this not a target? (White on Gold) 2018, Oil based acrylic on anodized aluminum in painted artist frame, 50 x 50 inches