From the claustrophobic discord of quarantine to overwhelming joy of creating new life, the couples in Milez’s work are living through experiences from her own life and filtered through a language of dance and compression. They are duet partners and day labourers, wrapping around each other with thick limbs and rubberized joints, contorting into and away from each other.
Their compressed domestic space brings both clumsiness and humour to the realities of daily life in sharing and creating a home. At times they illustrate the synchronous unity that might be expected from a long term relationship, and at times tripping over the other in a moment of broken empathy. Their intimacy is joyful and awkward. It is a battle through the difficult moments to create a home.
Their work argues for the significance of everyday life and that the menial tasks required by it are not mundane but a tether to creation.
Erin Milez lives and works in Bayonne, New Jersey. She is represented by Monya Rowe gallery, New York. Milez graduated with an MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Art in in 2021. Solo exhibitons inlcude My Right, Your Left, Arsenal Contempoary (Online), New York, US (2022). Group exhibitions include Go Figure!, Daniel Raphael Gallery, London, UK (2022); The Bathroom Show, Monya Rowe Gallery, New York, US (2022); Talking All Day, Badr Jundi, Gallery, Marbella, Spain (2022); Loved Ones, The New York Academy of Art, New York, Us (2022); Lights, Lorin Gallery, Los Angeles, US (2022).