Colour as an Amplifier
Interview with the artist Gerold Miller
Gerold Miller, Foto: Patrick Desbrosses
Gerold Miller, Verstärker (amplifier) 10, 2016
Art has the power to connect people and foster friendships. A unique example of this is the relationship between the collector Rainer Stadler and the artist Gerold Miller. Both come from the same town in Upper Swabia, and they share a friendship that dates back to childhood. After years of losing touch, art brought them back together.
Since then, Gerold Miller’s works have become a central part of the Stadler collection. The acquisition of the first piece, Riverside Wall in 2011, marked the beginning of a close engagement with and documentation of Gerold Miller’s artistic development. A special highlight in the collaboration between collector and artist was the exhibition "In erster Linie" in 2022, where works by Gerold Miller from the Stadler collection were displayed in three window-like façade spaces of the Neues Museum in Nuremberg.
Over the years, a deep friendship has developed between the Stadler family and Gerold Miller—one that goes beyond mere collecting and enriches both sides. In this interview, Gerold Miller offers us insights into his development as an artist, his creative process, and his life between Berlin and Tuscany.
Gerold Miller, Riverside Wall, 2003
When would you describe the beginning of your “career”, how did you become an artist?
There isn’t really a specific starting point. I was very creative even as a child. I only truly became an artist when I was admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart. It was in this "protected" environment that my first serious engagement with the subject of art began.
Do you remember your first realized work?
One of my first works at the academy was an abstract, almost conceptual piece in a figurative foundation class, which had to be attended before joining a specialized class. While most students were modeling heads and figures, I poured plaster into a corner of the classroom. After it dried, I pulled the cast, measuring about 30 x 30 x 30 cm, slightly out of the corner so that a form emerged in the space, defined by the conditions of the surrounding room. That was my first sculpture, and this theme still occupies me today.
What was your personal favorite project or work that you have worked on, and why?
That is a difficult question, especially for someone like me who constantly redefines and revises their body of work. An exhibition that closely matched my vision was my solo exhibition in 2012 at the Mies van der Rohe House in Berlin. My works, my themes, entered into an optimal interplay and dialogue with Mies van der Rohe’s architecture there.
Exhibition view of Gerold Miller at Mies van de Rohe House, 2012
What does your work process look like? What role does collaboration with your team or service providers play?
I design the series of works and exhibitions entirely by hand in scale models using special cardboard, a cutter, scissors, and glue. Everything that arises during this process is three-dimensional. At a certain point, I decided that the working process needed to change. Since then, the realization of my works always involves close collaboration with my team, external staff, and various specialized companies.
Your works often exist on the boundary between painting, sculpture, and installation. How do you define your own art?
I am certainly a minimalist with a conceptual orientation. Everything comes into being within space or in the context of architecture. Themewise, I consistently navigate the tension between sculpture and painting. At the same time, I try to explore and redefine boundaries.
What inspires you to start a new body of work or series, and why do you revisit old series?
New bodies of work are constantly being created. Sometimes I revisit previously completed themes, developing them further with new techniques, rephrasing them, and placing them in a new formal and conceptual context. There must be no standstill.
Gerold Miller, instant vision 184/185/186, 2022
What role does colour play in your work? How do you decide which colours to use?
In my early work, there was hardly any colour. It wasn’t until the late 1990s, with my move to Berlin, that the first colours appeared. My first coloured works were inspired by the colour combinations on magazine covers. They were based on a ready-made use of very bright colours in contrast with black and white. To properly implement these visual impressions, I began working with local painters. Later, I started using colour as an amplifier for its formal quality. The choice of colours was initially somewhat arbitrary, which didn’t bother me at first. Over time, however, I moved away from this arbitrariness and focused on a limited colour palette, which I have only expanded very slowly and through an elaborate selection process ever since.
Are there new materials you would like to explore?
There are always new materials that interest me and that I try out. Currently, I am realizing my first wall reliefs in bronze in Italy, which I greatly enjoy. Bronze casting has a long tradition in this region, which opens up new possibilities and ideas for me. At the moment, I’m not sure where this will lead, but the process is very exciting and inspiring for me.
You work in Berlin and Italy. What is the appeal of these two places for you, and how do they influence your artistic practice?
In addition to Berlin, we have had a second residence and workplace in Pistoia, Italy, for 7 years. These places are opposites in character and could hardly be more different. Both offer me completely different working possibilities and conditions in this context. In Berlin, we have two spacious studio halls that are very urban and where I can work with my entire team. In Italy, I work alone and try to engage directly in production at old artisan workshops, focusing primarily on traditional techniques in stone sculpture workshops and art foundries.
Exhibition view with works by Gerold Miller, "In erster Linie" Neues Museum Nuremberg, 2022, Foto: Matthias Kolb
What do you enjoy doing as a balance to your artistic work?
In Italy, I spend a lot of time on ecological landscape design. We aim to continue and further develop the local ecological cultivation of olive trees. Additionally, we are creating a sculpture park there, which follows the tradition of the great Italian sculpture parks from Pratolino near Florence to the Fattoria di Celle near Prato.
Which artists (including those from older generations) inspire you, and with which artists are you friends or do you exchange ideas?
My artistic work is equally influenced by the 1960s and 1980s. My childhood and youth in southern Germany were especially shaped by the art of the 1960s. Regional art, as well as Swiss Concrete Art, were my first aesthetic "confrontations" that I worked through and from which I developed an early vocabulary. Later, in the 1980s, the same applied to Neo-Geo art, which packaged political, philosophical, and socially critical content in an ostensibly neutral, geometrically abstract visual language—a concept I found very intriguing. I am still friends with some of its representatives to this day. The work of Franz Erhard Walther has always played a central role for me, as I was already familiar with his artistic work before attending the academy.
What advice would you give to a new generation of artists?
That’s difficult. The art world has changed significantly since my early days. Today, there are many more opportunities to work creatively. In my view, the profession of an artist requires a certain uncompromising attitude, the ability to resist, and perseverance.
