Catalogue essay for the exhibition “Interactions”, Salon 77, Niš

It is impossible to reflect on Mila Gvardiol’s Interactions without referring to two of her previous cycles of geometric abstraction from which the new paintings emerge both formally and conceptually: Architectural Imaginations (digital prints, 2020) and Architectural Variations (acrylic on canvas, begun in 2023).
The artist introduced the stylized forms of the recognizable brutalist stepped cubic-shaped buildings of New Belgrade blocks of flats known as Blocks 61, 62, 63 and 64 (stepped cuboid) as a motif in the cycle Architectural Imaginations, and then in Architectural Variations she further reduced and purged them of any “superfluous” details: The buildings have lost their windows, balconies and symbols of everyday life, becoming sculptural forms in static contemplation.[1]
Interactions represent a return to the perspective from the lower angle of Architectural Imagination. As a novelty, Mila Guardiol introduces a circular, spiral movement, a whirlwind resembling the swing of Michelangelo’s ‘Christ the Judge’ from the Last Judgment of the Sistine Chapel, transforming space from a constant static to a dynamic temporality. The compositions still consist of three fundamental elements – background, light and shadow – but now they shape a space of mutual interaction and visual tension.[2] The artist depicts immense, large-sized cubes that get out of their depth at the moment of turning, twisting, and falling, their central axis leaning towards the centre of the composition in which there is a space – whiteness, a source of light, an aperture. In addition to movement, a colour change also influenced the transformations of the compositions: from the initial images of a monochrome range to the introduction of colour that culminates in a crescendo of rays of light passed through an imaginary prism outside the space of the painting, to the re-calming of colours, but not the atmosphere of the latest paintings. The source of light also undergoes a metamorphosis – from a centrally placed, clearly defined aperture, through the reduction of its strength (articulation with darker shades) and the decentralization of its position in compositions of a horror vacui of collapsing geometric bodies and the complete disappearance in artworks with a vibrant spectrum of rays of light, to its re-establishment in the form of centred whiteness.
The composition structure can be seen as an inverse apotheosis[3] since the elements in the vortex of circular motion move not towards but from a centrally placed light source. The structure of the inverse apotheosis is present in the scenes of the Fall from Grace. In the mythological representations of the Fall of the Giants[4], the source of light (Olympus) is in the visual centre, and in the Christian iconography of the ‘Fall of the Archangel’[5], heaven is located at the very top of the upper side of the scene. Mila Gvardiol’s composition corresponds to the spatial structure of the inverse apotheosis, i.e. the Christian iconography of the heavenly battle that preceded the Fall of Lucifer and the antique iconography of the Fall of the Giants. As in the scenes of the Apotheosis and the Fall, the doubling of architecture also appears in Mila Gvardiol’s Interactions – from the architectural space of the palace/temple/gallery, we observe painted architectural structures that rise or fall on us, creating the illusion of depth/height of space. Therefore, the natural position for the exhibition’s displayed Interactions would be the ceiling rather than the walls.
Geometric cubic forms are reminiscent of children’s Lego parts morphing from one structure to another. We can also read them as a symbol of the artist’s environment, as the backdrop of life present since childhood, which in her works reflect both intimate/personal and situational/social life changes. The swirling motion, a sign of transformation, indicates the time of new interactions and decisions. The motif of the recognizable buildings of New Belgrade blocks as the author’s residence is specifically urban, whilst the theme of change and the fear of a possible catastrophe that every change brings along is general (collapse as a sign of danger, threat, anxiety). The orientation of vertical direction changes from rising to falling as the architectural elements ascend from the ground, turn in space and seem as if they are about to tumble towards us. However, in each painting, there is also a space of light as a metaphor for salvation, a space of compressed energy of interactions, a still visible signpost to a way out of the situation.
The key to understanding the cycle is the unambiguous change in colour in the compositions of the most intense entropy, the most outstanding chaos: in two paintings, the artist moves the light source from the centre of the composition to the space outside the picture and articulates the presence of light with rays that seem to pass through a prism also outside the composition, refracting and colouring the cubic shapes and their interspace along the entire path of their spread, almost Caravaggio-like. However, here we do not have a Caravaggio-like bad luck fate, but good fortune; a happy circumstance that illuminates the more beautiful side of the situation, as indicated by the gentle, almost pastel, cheerful tones awakened by the rays of light. In these two artworks, the initial collapse of reduced architectural/geometric forms loses its strength and stops; the vortex activity converts into the levitation of forms in a liminal space, and time freezes.
We can interpret the depictions of buildings formally reduced to cubic forms as a personification of the artist’s inner world but also as a personification of the entire system: life, society, order, and faith in the strength and stability of the structure of which we are a part. Although the communicative nature of the works will be closest to people who live in or know the New Belgrade blocks well due to immediate recognition of the architecture and situation, the rest of the audience who has gone through life’s catastrophes, the uncertainty of the situation and personal powerlessness (and who hasn’t?) will also effortlessly connect with them. Instead of a subject that can influence the crisis, each observer becomes an object on which the world can collapse, and this feeling is universal. The focus of each composition is the source of light (if present) or the illuminated surfaces of the cubic shapes (when the light comes from a source outside the surface of the canvas). Therefore, the primary channel of communication among the architectural forms in the compositions and also between the artwork and the spectator is light. How Mila Gvardiol articulates light causes the initial anxiety of the observer to turn into playfulness, moving in the end to calmness.
Interestingly, the initial meaning of the phenomena and their presentation is in contrast: the solid falls/floats, the Apotheosis changes direction downwards and can become the Fall, while the gentle, cheerful colours of the joy of life are present only in compositions of the greatest entropy and condensed, intense and unpredictable interactions. As in the iconography of the Apotheosis and the Fall from Grace, there is a presence of the supernatural – ​​the rays of light and their colours as a ‘deus ex machina’ resolve the situation because they make us see the scene unfolding before (and within) us in a different light, literally.
The Interactions do not mark the end of one phase but the continuation of the previous ones, evolving into a visual narrative of the relational concept, establishing relationships and various forms of communication whose outcome is still not in sight (frozen floating).
In paintings, we feel collapse as evil, but also the sky/gap in the sense of the embodiment of good. We can also observe the artworks as a relationship between good and evil, life and death, but by no means in a one-way, banal sense.
Symbolically, Apotheosis signifies ascension, salvation and deification, and Fall from Grace represents collapse, devastation and disintegration. Mila Gvardiol’s Interactions ‘float’ precisely in this interspace between triumph and defeat, in the collision of the joy of life and anxiety.

[1] From Mila Gvardiol’s statement for the cycle Architectural Variations
[2] From Mila Gvardiol’s statement for the cycle Interactions
[3] Apotheosis signifies deification, elevation to the realm of gods, and the triumph of virtue. Apotheosis compositions are based on an illusionistic perspective from a lower angle. One of the most famous scenes of apotheosis is the fresco Triumph of St. Ignatius (1694) by the Baroque artist Andrea del Pozzo in the church of St. Ignatius in Rome.
[4] In the fresco The Fall of the Giants (1532-34) by the Mannerist artist Giulio Romano in the Pallazo del Te in Mantua, Italy, Jupiter at Olympus in the centre of the composition excels and destroys the Giants, while everything around them collapses and falls on the viewer.
[5] In the Fall of Lucifer, the fallen archangel is expelled from heaven after a heavenly battle and falls into the darkness of hell, as depicted in the prints (woodcuts) of Paul Gustave Doré and also in the drawings of William Blake, both Romantism artists who illustrated various editions of John Milton’s poem Paradise Lost.