Chris Millar is a creator of self-sustaining worlds. His latest work "Bejeweled Double Festooned Plus Skull for Girls" is a magically suspended toy-making bubble hovering over China. The complexity of the multi-level, Escher-like space of staircases and flip sides is 'festooned' with detail and disallows an easy reading of what is going on.

At first, I only noticed different sections of the factory: a toilet with a tube going down into the garden; a clothesline attached to a bicycle pedal; some hamburgers with ketchup and mustard. My first guess was that a crazy and crafty hoarder lives in it. Although the inhabitant is unseen, the stacked supplies and waste systems suggest he or she or they are total recluses who receive and deliver all their goods through conveyor devices.

Photo Courtesy of TrepanierBaer Gallery, John Dean

Even though I was essentially a giant looking in on the house/factory, I couldn't observe the whole picture. The culture on the hovercraft was too complex for my ad hoc anthropological skills. I think this is what makes BDFPSFG so grand of an art experience. Even though the clues are all laid out in immaculate plastic detail, you could probably look at it forever.

That said, when I talked to Chris and he (or his finger) walked me through the rooms of the factory, I couldn't believe that I didn't get the story myself. The factory is an organic entity that processes sheets of plastic into flat templates that are folded into skulls, decorated, packaged and dropped down to earth. Each stage in the process has its own station or room, and there are also living spaces for the end of the workday or breaks. It's easy to see once he points it out, how this factory works. It's funny that this mini scheme looks functional, even the infinite staircase seems structurally believable.

Photo Courtesy of TrepanierBaer Gallery, John Dean

The reason I couldn't see the progression of the skull toys was that there were too many excessive objects in the way. I wonder if Millar has created a fiction based in the reality of his own studio. He likes people who collect and accumulate stuff. He also says he doesn't like to over think what he is doing when he is making a piece. It needs to be spontaneous, he says, and he might chicken out if he thinks about it. Perhaps another reason Millar doesn't think too hard about what he is doing is that he can't think straight with all the stuff around. But also, could he make this kind of work without that environment of material surplus? In a way, Millar is revealing his artistic process in the narrative of the piece.

Photo Courtesy of TrepanierBaer Gallery, John Dean

Another idea coming through in the piece is nostalgia for being a kid in the 80's and 90's. Millar says it was important to him that the sculpture didn't look like a dollhouse. To me, it looks like a Lego apartment kit (for girls). The boy Lego kits were usually castles, boats or space ships. The girl Lego kits were apartments, horse ranches and vacation resorts. The kind of toys I grew up with would have been the same as those of Millar's childhood: neon, plastic, realistic, detailed, and most importantly, non-computerized. The toy skull-making factory is completely mechanical, harking back to the industrial age before lasers and microchips (not to be confused with micro nacho chips.) In such a world, materials are tangible, space is needed for construction, and things are put together slowly. Here is another instance of the artist (intentionally or accidentally) making a subject of his process. Painters and sculptors value the material, the consuming work, and the handcrafted. They may also, like old toy makers, feel threatened that their medium of choice is outdated in an age of digital technologies.

Facing the threat of an obsolete art practice, Millar has worked out a theoretical epoch for his painting practice that he calls "post-interesting painting." He says that he isn't concerned with progressing the conceptual territory of painting. He is instead working with "bad concepts" such as "possessed chip bags, cool machines, and loud music." Purposely focusing on "bad concepts" takes away the pressure to solve the big problems of life, love and truth through art. Millar would rather stick to his own world, as a political stance, whether it is reclusive or not. He considers how to proceed and what he can make that is well crafted and humorous. Next he will ease himself back into painting from sculpture by creating a dedication on the back of the canvas. Knowing how you work best, your limits and how to take the pressure off at first: these sound like good concepts.