Mia Middleton is Summoning Something Surreal

The first work that Mia Middleton completed for her new solo show at Roberts Projects, Summoning Cleo, was an almost monochromatic, deep red castle-like structure that looks as if it was temporarily staged for a production. It’s called Citadel, which by definition means a fortification, somewhere protected, safe. But, let’s be clear, this place doesn’t look safe.  Looking around, you get the sense that all these paintings are part of this production, this play, dystopian and fantastical, and yet familiar and uncanny. Middleton’s works have floored me before (her works at Art Basel Miami Beach last year were some of the best of the entire fair), and she knows how to set the stage for a drama to unfold. And here, in subtle ways, and so effortlessly arranged, this is the type of work that shows that something haunting doesn’t need to be overly confrontational. The fracturing is the scariest part. 

Middleton told me at the opening that the faces are obscured, the colors rich and the characters almost incomprehensible because she wants you to feel this tension of a world pushed to its limit. I wanted to know if this was the future or the past, but she said that time isn’t important here; it's more about the absence that is the intention. We haven’t even talked about how gifted she is as a painter (you can tell I really liked this show, by the way), because the hands and grips in the seminal work for the show, titled the same, Summoning Cleo, and they way she captures motion feels like visual séance. Everything in this show, from a jump to an arched-stance to a slight glance back at the viewer, feels like a deliberate act of a stage actor. One of my favorite works, Turning (Outside the World), greets you at the beginning of the show, and immediately the facepaint gives off a feeling of almost terror and horror that you may be walking into. 

Middleton worked on this show for 18 months, and it does feel like a body of work that is so considered, so thought through, that I found it also quite amazing how much she was able to let a narrative element of the show feel so freeing. Like the best plays, there are multiple meanings here, and Middleton is at the top of her game as our visual playwright. —Evan Pricco