John Miller, "Suburban Past Time"

Since the early 1980s, this veteran artist—a CalArts colleague of Mike Kelly and Tony Oursler—has slyly deconstructed the pretensions of the art world and our consumerist society alike. For his latest show, Miller, an American who divides his time between New York and Berlin, offers an installation-cum-performance that tweaks our notions of public space. Images of grim German apartment blocks wallpaper a gallery space filled with filing cabinets and the sort of fiberglass approximations of nature—trees, rocks—used to disguise suburban pool equipment. This peculiar pocket park serves as a setting for two live performers who will spend the entirety of the show sitting, reading or simply lounging about, just as office workers might on a never-ending lunch hour.