Sep 20

Mila Weis

Written by Kristen T. Woodward, curator, MFA, professor of art, Albright College.

Mila Weis is a sought-after contemporary abstract artist with membership in the Professional Association of Visual Artists in Wuerzburg, Germany. She has exhibited her paintings in Germany and Switzerland, at Gallery VIEW in Nuremberg, Germany, SWISSARTEXPO in Zurich, Switzerland, and BBK Gallery in Kulturspeicher Wuerzburg, Germany. Her work was featured in the Fall 2023 Artmajeur magazine No. 27, a quarterly magazine with a virtual platform registered in Montpellier, France. Mia’s work has also been featured half a dozen times to date in the Saatchi Art catalogue as well as inclusion in their curated collections.

Through non-objectivity, Mila’s works are formally rooted in color field painting, with a contemporary eye towards pixelation and movement. Fluctuations of acrylic color in low contrast, high saturation values form fluid waves of painterly marks which appear to coalesce in successive bands. The artist likens these paint waves to carriers of energy made visible. Directionality of brushwork reveals subtle fissures of resistance, as overlays of thick brushwork overtake the thinner underpainting. Despite the relative simplicity of her compositions, her active brushstrokes often retain the integrity of their original momentum, forming a visual push and pull tension. Mila’s most economic paintings suggest the top layer of paint has engulfed previous marks, becoming a final repository of collected light.

The Light Pulses series organizes visual currents of pale salmon and earthy tones into landscape-oriented tableaus. A chalky blue-white tone permeates the color palette in several pieces within the series, acting as a salty agent in an abstract sea. Light Experience No. 4 (pictured above) forgoes the manifestation of a horizon present in other Light Pulses. Broad and striated paint strokes float successive horizontal gray stripes on a dark field, as warm tinted hues lend brushier counter fluxes. Other paintings in this particular series have increasingly articulated relationships between sea and sky in sweeping sections of tinted blue.

Another recent series of acrylic paintings grouped under the title Flow reduces the abstract landscape further, to realize effervescent spheres within rectangular color fields. These economically applied works celebrate the primacy of warmth and light. The Beginning / Limelight (pictured above) is another 100 cm square acrylic on canvas. As the hues shift from lemon to lime within a blurred circular form, viewers may deliberate on the origins of the sphere and consider cosmological relationships. Several pieces build up a saturated and hot color palette that becomes a meditation on our planet and an ever-burning sun. The light of celestial bodies correspondingly awakens our senses in softened Joseph Albers-esque squares. The limelight referenced in the title of the piece, however, plays with our corporeal expectations. The glare of publicity and fame are a weak substitute for the chastity promised in related paintings.

Mila Weis understands the decisive role color temperature and abstract form plays in our longing for transformation. She believes wholeheartedly in painting as an agent of pleasure and in “the intoxicating feeling of complete oneness with oneself and the world”. Although a lot to ask of an aesthetic experience, she delivers with vibrant execution. Her paintings are formal works helping to define the new trajectory of contemporary color field painting. Vibrant raw color melts into pulsating forms. These works are truly a pleasure to behold. For the faithful, Mila’s paintings go further than composition and function as catalysts for visual harmony and emotional balance.