Alice Miller

My paintings explore our ambivalent relationship with darkness in modernity. Through darkness and touch, framed within the context of nocturnal social scenes, I rework everyday reliance on light and vision in Western culture. Observing moving bodies within nightclubs provided initial inspiration — these dark spaces alter behaviour and rules of social interaction, lowering inhibitions and increasing intimacy.

Each piece is a direct translation of a single image — a mobile phone photograph or video still, depicting or taken by myself, in which I have experienced the viewpoint of the camera’s detached lens. Photorealism shows the camera’s presence as opposed to reality — a fragment of time expands on the painting’s surface. Figures’ identities become impenetrable and the image loses specificity.