Searching for Meaning in Capitalist Desire Machinery
Adam Milner, RAINRAIN Gallery, New York
by Chunbum Park, April 7, 2025
In a world where the formula is set, in which the modus operandi of everyone and everything seems to be organically negotiated for the sake of readability and compatibility, what makes art a disruption in the machinery (of capitalism and consumption-based society)? Another exhibition with more paintings and sculptures to label, price, and sell? What is a gallery but a retail business fully integrated into the system like a matrix? What is an exhibition but a drinking party where people casually entertain ideas without genuinely believing in those ideas as revolutionary calls to act? Can there ever be an escape from the system, which is akin to a slaughterhouse by the most wealthy few against the most vulnerable, for us farm animals?
Adam Milner’s solo exhibition at RAINRAIN titled “Meanwhile” is neither a Marxist manifesto nor an overtly political work. Milner’s works can be generalized as consisting of found objects that are often modified with drawing or coloring texturing and other means, as well as other personal or discarded objects belonging to either the artist himself, his acquaintances, or strangers. In the exhibition “Meanwhile Assortment” (2011-25), the lack of “organization” in how the objects are presented in an eclectic manner without individual frames or pedestals would initially concern or bother the viewers upon entering the gallery. Furthermore, the found nature of the works raises the question of what makes art art, as initially raised by Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain” (1917).
Meanwhile Assortment, 2011-25
Vintage book clippings, foil wrappers, enamel, and gesso on cookie tins; cast and 3D printed bronze; gesso on chocolate box dividers, with brass, glue, and acrylic items; twist ties, plastic STD swab shaft, and burnt incense sticks in fabric gift bag; porcelain and stoneware containers; sand, flashe, and label on skin cream tin; sand and interior latex on chocolate box; plexiglass, foam core, paper, glitter, acrylic medium, dyed velvet, praying mantis, label, found house; enamel, flashe, interior latex paint, sand, and label on cookie box; glitter, beads, and rhinestones on recycled wax in cardboard box; glazed porcelain; rock with gum chewed and arranged by the artist's sister; Pet Rock in porcelain dish; egg candle on metal shelving, interior latex paint, enamel, and acrylic on chocolate box; aluminum foil in macaron boxes; found glass figurines, candy, found rock art, bronze Snoopy by the artist's dad, glazed porcelain, and 2011 Easter egg with acrylic, ink, and graphite, on foil covered box with tangles and plasticine; flashe and gift ribbon on box, ceramic pots with glaze, tissue paper; label on box with interior contents; dried petals and pronoun pins in glazed stoneware with poseable Santa; paint on coffee cups; fi gurine borrowed from the artist's dad
Dimensions variable
Should there be a definition for art or a person with the authority to decide this definition and to arbitrate any disputes on this definition?
What is the definition of art? Who makes the definition of art? Should there be a definition for art or a person with the authority to decide this definition and to arbitrate any disputes on this definition? The French philosopher Charles Batteux argued in his 1746 treatise that fine art (“les beaux arts”) differentiates itself from mechanical arts (craft or commercial art?) and the hybrid, which would include architecture. This is because the mechanical arts and the hybrid category of art (to a lesser degree) serve utilitarian purposes, whereas fine arts is dedicated only to aesthetic pleasure. Batteux argues that fine art painters should represent or imitate nature (or people) in their best parts and piece together a “beautiful nature,” which may not exist in the literal, physical reality.
Found objects such as those by Duchamp defy this early definition of fine art as an imitation of nature because found objects are nature or objects sitting in reality that refer to a symbolic or abstract visual realm or other physical objects that may signify other objects or abstract concepts. (On the other hand, on a closer examination, we find realistic paintings and sculptures to be abstractly and symbolically formed but generally refer to the macroscopic physical reality as seen and experienced by us humans. For example, if one zooms into a part of a realistic painting or sculpture, it appears abstract.) In Milner’s “Meanwhile Assortment,” we find a circular container coated blue, representing the planet Earth as seen from outer space. In another example, we see two rectangular aluminum sculptures that signify the Twin Towers in NYC in the same installation. Found objects are, in a way, copies of copies that run relays in an endless chain of meanings and/or signification of other objects without actually being copied.
Looking at “Meanwhile Assortment” closer, we find the lack of boundaries between the works of found and/or modified objects, collectibles, and modified collectibles. This blurring of forms and presentation represents a critique against the formalization of art as a set of protocols for predictable engagement or interaction with set definitions.
Frames or pedestals often serve as the abstract boundary between the world of aesthetic objects and our physical world, between the institutions of galleries and museums with authority to designate fine art and the public on the receiving end of this relationship, and between fine art for pure aesthetic pleasure, other objects that serve utilitarian purposes, and craft and “mechanical arts” positioned between the two. The lack of delineation of this boundary in Milner’s installation piece reveals the artist's sophisticated thinking, which questions ages-old conventions and definitions on what constitutes fine art.
Red Drawings, 2020-25, Ink and gesso on wrappers, aluminum frames, 6.5 x 16 in, 6.5 x 20 in, 6.5 x 36 in
The exhibition’s found segments are balanced by a series of works titled “Red Drawings” (2020-25), in which the artist draws symbolically the geometric, symmetrically logical, pseudoscientific, and spiritual abstract compositions drawn with red ink (using a brush) on candy wrappers, framed in aluminum. Does Milner finally conform here to the typical conventions regarding fine art, putting frames around the aesthetic objects or visual experiences? Not really, because the red drawings on found wrappers borderline conceptual blueprint drawings or graphic design more than traditional, abstract, or figurative paintings or drawings. This time, the frame is there, but the work being framed is marked by contradictions that reject the traditional notions of fine art as separate from graphic design or requiring greater visual depth. The modest amount of visual depth these drawings on wrappers carry is partly inscribed in the aluminum material, which is fragile, used, and wrinkled. The history of these wrappers, in addition to the web of multiple meanings and relationships elucidated by the symbolic or abstract drawings in red, contrasts the superficiality of the aluminum frame, which is reflective in a commercial manner.
Milner’s work concerns production and consumption concerning art and everyday life within a capitalist world. The symmetry of the red drawings describes the equal and transactional actions and reactions. At the same time, the asymmetry may suggest both unconditional love and unequal exploitation. In our capitalist world, the priceless is priced, and love can be bought (to be pessimistically put). Desire is the driving sociopolitical (and personal) force within every individual, making us eager participants in the capitalist machinery and a unit or a machine of capitalism.
In Milner’s work, we have the commercial products and objects transformed into aesthetic art objects, which simultaneously question the definition of art and the abstract boundary between art and non-art. Is this discovery and transformation ultimately part of the artist's capitalist or anti-capitalist aim or design? It is hard to say. However, even the very act of raising questions on the conventions and the definitions of art concerning the articles of consumption and how the former (art) differentiates itself from the latter (consumer products and other found objects) is already very critical and subversive.