Rob Miles, born in London in 1987, lives and works in Paris.
Starting from observational drawing, Miles deconstructs and reassembles his subject matter through the use of multiple perspectives, fragmentation, and the flattening of pictorial space. Developing his ideas through painting, printmaking and collage, he creates unusual compositions that remain in playful tension between representation and graphic abstraction. He invites the viewer to join him in an unresolved and questioning act of looking.
Taking inspiration from ancient Egyptian art, Cubism, and Oriental non-perspective, along with contemporary digital interfaces, Miles composes colourful unfolded interior spaces, and individual scenes of social interaction. Through depictions of kitchens, cafés and classrooms, or people engaged in games or conversation, he celebrates the theatrical in the commonplace, the mise-en-scene of daily life.
His more recent use of paper marquetry collage, and cut-out painted wood, further interrogates the flatness and illusion of 2D space, through the physical fracturing and assembling of the surface itself. The materiality and vocabulary of form hold an equal importance to the subjects depicted.
Rob Miles was selected for Revelations Emerige in 2020, exhibited at the SNU Museum of Art, Korea in 2022, and is represented by Galerie Catherine Putman, Paris.