Born 1961, Castro Valley, CA.
Dan Miller spends the majority of each day drawing, painting, typing, or otherwise rendering a dizzying array of letters and numbers into layered abstractions. Names of objects, food items, cities, friends, family members, and other details of life inhabit his works, but their legibility is almost always completely obliterated by the artist’s obsessive overlapping of words. In 2010, Time Out New York’s Ann Doran wrote, “Miller’s astonishing works fuse compulsive documentation with gestural abstraction, their autobiographical content dispersed, like sand in water, in a nonobjective field.”
Miller, who is autistic, is a thirty-two-year veteran of Oakland’s Creative Growth Art Center, the country’s most renowned non-profit serving artists with disabilities. He is the most renowned living artist at Creative Growth, whose roster includes internationally known figures like William Scott (b.1964), Judith Scott (1943-2005) and Dwight MacKintosh (1906-1999).
Miller has exhibited his work widely, initially within the Outsider Art community and subsequently at major institutions including the Museum of Modern Art (Glossolalia, 2008), the Venice Biennale (Viva Arte Viva, 2017), and currently SFMOMA (Creative Growth: The House that Art Built, 2024). His art is included in the permanent collections of the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT, the American Folk Art Museum, New York, the Berkeley Art Museum, CA, the Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C., among others. In 2018, the artist was featured in the documentary series, Art in the Twenty-first Century, produced by Art 21.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024
Light Bulb, Socket, Outlet, Fan, Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York, NY
2022
Dan Miller: Large Works 2015-2021, Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York, NY
Lines of Thought: Gestural Abstraction in the BAMPFA Collection, BAMPFA, Berkeley, CA
2020
Dan Miller: Important Paintings and Textiles, Diane Rosenstein Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2019
Frieze Art Fair New York, Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York, NY
2018
Dan Miller, Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York, NY
2017
Dan Miller: Recent Paintings, Diane Rosenstein Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2016
Click, Diane Rosenstein Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2014
Creative Growth: Dan Miller, Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York, NY
Dan Miller, Graphein II, Christian Berst Art Brut, Paris, FR
2012
Dan Miller: Graphein, Galerie Christian Berst, Paris, FR
2010
Dan Miller: Large Drawings, Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York, NY
Dan Miller Types and Draws, Yukiko Koide Presents, Tokyo, Japan
2007
White Columns, New York, NY
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2024
Creative Growth: The House That Art Built, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
2022
Creative! Growth!, curated by Matthew Higgs, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan WI
Lines of Thought: Gestural Abstraction in the BAMPFA Collection, curated by Julie Rodrigues
Widholm, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA
2021
Figure Out: Abstraction in Self-Taught Art, Outsider Art Fair New York, Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York, NY
2020
Six Decades Collecting Self-Taught Art: Revealing a Diverse and Rich Artistic Narrative, curated by Emelie Gevalt and Valérie Rousseau, American Folk Art Museum, New York, NY
An Alternative Canon: Art Dealers Collecting Outsider Art, curated by Paul Laster, Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York, NY
2019
CE x CG x NIAD, Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco, CA
The Seven Year Itch, Diane Rosenstein Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Summer Exhibition: Recent Works, Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York, NY
2018
Art is For Everyone: Outsider Art, Telegraph Hill Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Do the Write Thing 2: read between the lines, Berst Art Brut, Paris, FR
2017
Viva Arte Viva, 57th Venice Biennale, curated by Christine Macel, Arsenal, Venice, IT
Wouldn't it be nice if we could dream together, Diane Rosenstein Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Drawing Now 2017, Salon du Dessin Contemporain, Carreau du Temple, Paris, FR
Living in Art Brut, 123 works from the Hannah Rieger Collection, Museumkrems, Krems an der Donau, AT
Brut Now: l’Art Brut au Temps des Technologies, Musées de Belfort, FR
Museum of Everything, Museum of Old and New Art, Berridale, AU
2016
World Made By Hand, Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York, NY
Escape Routes, curated by Amy Chaloupka, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI
Signed & Numbered, Jules Maeght Gallery, San Francisco, CA
The 2016 Wynn Newhouse Awards Exhibition, The Palitz Gallery at Syracuse University Lubin House, New York, NY
Celebrating a Vision: Art and Disability, SFO Museum, San Francisco International Airport, San Francisco, CA
2015
dRAW, curated by Jan Petry, Intuit Museum, Chicago, IL
Art Brut live, Dox Contemporary Art Center, Prague, CZ
Art Brut: collection abcd, La Maison Rouge, Paris, FR
Soit 10 Ans, états intérieurs, Christian Berst Art Brut, Paris, FR
2014
Purple States, curated by Sam Gordon, Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York, NY
Mental Contours III. - Lines of Force, Artinbox Gallery, Prague, CZ
2013
Outsider Artists, curated by Philip Linhares, Oakland Museum of California, CA
Undercover Genius, Petaluma Arts Center, Petaluma, CA
Ten Years, Wallspace Gallery, New York, NY
Judith Scott & Dan Miller: Creative Growth, curated by Matthew Higgs, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT
Exhibition #1.1, Museum of Everything, Chalet Society, Paris, FR
Margins to Mainstream: Contemporary Artists with Disabilities, Sonoma County Museum, Santa Rosa, CA
Creative Growth, Galeries Art Cru, Berlin, DE
Creative Growth, Park Life Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2012
Creative Growth, curated by Amie Scally, Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, NY
Inside Out, Galleri Nordnorge, Harstad, NO
Different and Special, Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art, Ansan-si, KOR
John Hiltunen +1 - A Creative Growth Exhibition, curated by Matthew Higgs, Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco, CA
2011
Create, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA
Exhibition #4, Museum of Everything, London, EN
Revealed, Galerie Drylewicz, Paris, FR
2010
Georg Jensen, New York, NY
Large Drawings, Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York, NY
The Museum of Everything, Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin, Italy
In the House, Madmusée, Liège, BE
2009
Creative Growth, curated by Matthew Higgs, Galerie Giti Nourbakhsch, Berlin, DE
Entre les Lignes: Paintings & Drawings by Naomie Kremer and Dan Miller, Galerie Impaire, Paris, FR
Chromatic: 35 Colorful Years of Creative Growth, Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2008
Glossolalia: Languages of Drawing, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Communication Breakdown, Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York, NY
Communication Breakdown, Galerie Impaire, Paris, FR
2007
Creative Growth, Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York, NY
Creative Growth Art Center, abcd la galerie, Montreuil, FR
2006
Leon Borensztein and His Friends: A Look at Creative Growth Artists and Their Work, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA
Headfooters Gallery, Cleveland, OH
2005
Autism/Asperger’s/Art, Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York, NY
SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT
American Folk Art Museum, New York, NY
Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, FR
Collection de L’Art Brut, Lausanne, Switzerland
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
"Dan Miller at Andrew Edlin Gallery," Art Critical, January 19, 2018.
"Dan Miller und Donald Mitchell," Kunst, die verbindet, Vienna, 2014.
Dan Miller: Graphein, exhibition catalogue, essays by Tom di Maria, Richard Leeman & Christian Berst, Galerie Christian Berst, Paris, 2012.
Everything #4, exhibition catalogue, The Museum of Everything, London. Rinder, Lawrence, Matthew Higgs & Kevin Killiam, Create, Berkeley Art Museum, University of California & Pacific Film Archive, 2011.
The Museum of Everything, exhibition catalogue, Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli & Electa, Turin/Milan, 2010.