Mia MiddletonSummoning Cleo

New oil paintings by Mia Middleton of anonymous, half-hidden figures and stage-like scenes, built around a figure named Cleo who never appears.

Middleton’s second solo show with the gallery pairs small, intensely worked canvases with paintings on a larger scale than before, in stage reds and archival grays. Her sources are late-19th-century theater imagery and anonymous old photographs found at markets.

Faces are covered or turned away: a figure in a wide-brimmed hat, a man with a coin for an eye, a castle-like factory in a romantic landscape, spotlit curtains about to open or close. Middleton, born in London in 1988 and from Northland, New Zealand, lives in Lisbon.

Full details at robertsprojectsla.com