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Jelena Milo
www.jelenamilo.net
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Beyond the beginning Paintings Wood Rock Air Water Sky Biography 3 16 19 25 28 35 2
Jelena Milo
Jelena Milo was born in ex Yugoslavia on July 4, 1979. The surroundings in which Jelena grew up were conducive to artistic studies: Milos father, famous painter of XX century died when Jelena was just eight years old. Jelena`s mother was fashion designer and Jelenas desire to become an artist was not a surprise. The little girl began by drawing still nature. She copied it from newspapers and magazines. In addition to her paintings, the young Jelena drew nature for her neighbors and got paid for it. At sixteen, Milo was already taking drawing classes with Professor Miroslav Babic. Belgrade, city where Jelena lived during the nineties, boasted in this time when museum collections of significance were closed, just few exhibitions and school of art existed in this circumstances of a civil war. Advised by her cousin Milan Milosavljevic, she entered the Academy of Art in Dusseldorf, the one of the leading centers of art in Europe. Jelena Milo began her studies at Dusseldorf Art Academy in 1999. The choice of Dusseldorf was not accidental. The Academy offered Milo the systematic training which she was already familiar with: emphasis on the drawn, painted and modeled sketch, careful production of visual form thought new media in reproduction of the visual world. Milo`s experience at Dusseldorf had an important influence on development of her later style. Her artistic formation was in many ways identical to that of other artists of her generation, and yet at the same time her development as an artist had profoundly distinctive individual features.
Awakening oil on canvas 50x50 cm. 2008 Next page Final infinity oil on canvas 150x130cm. - 2010
Milo`s tendency can be explained, not only by the fact that she was painting facets of nature that were close and familiar to man, but also by her perception of nature through the eyes of the ordinary man, revealing the world of his feelings. Each one of Milos landscapes is a revelation, a miracle of painting, but surely every man, so long as he is not totally blind to the beauty of his environment, experiences at least once in his life in that astounding sensation when in a sudden moment of illumination. So little is actually needed for this to occur a ray of sunshine, a gust of wind, a sunset haze and Milo, experienced such sensations frequently. The subject-matter of Milos landscapes is typical for her work in whole. She liked to paint water, hills, valleys... She painted forest roads, while her groups of massive trees in the foreground, were a tribute to the past. Milos particular interest in the reproduction of light is unmistakable. She uses blur individual patches of color to convey the vibrancy of light. These tend to be exceptions to the general pattern. The sense of the solidity of natural forms, presented in her landscapes is nevertheless more attenuated, mass being represented with use of contrast. In the beginning of 2008 Milo had not yet determined her personal subject-matter, but she had no wish to turn to historical, literary or exotic subjects that were popular in art. Instead, she made it her priority to serve the truth and to keep pace with time, and only experienced a slight uncertainty in deciding whether the landscape should be the genre central to her work. Her landscapes evoke memories of travels. The close observation of nature had the power which was, until then, undreamt of. No one was more sensitive to nature than Jelena. In Milos painting, color played a minor role. Luminosity in the paintings created a misty, atmospheric effect and a sad, lyrical mood. All these characteristics gave her landscapes the quality of visual reality and movement.
Above Creative tunnel oil on canvas 140x130cm. - 2012 Next page Till I count till 5 oil on canvas 130x90cm. - 2013
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Above Without anger oil on canvas 60x40cm. - 2012 Next page We arrived oil on canvas 50x40cm. - 2010
For Jelena, her vision of the world and her concept of painting had changed. She casted doubt on paintings literary nature, the necessity of always having to base a painting on a story, and consequently link it to historical and religious subjects. She chose the genre of landscape because it only referred to nature and it was a genre that appealed to observation and observation alone, rather than to the imagination. From observation came the artists new view of nature, the logical consequence of all her prior visual experience: it was more important to paint what one saw, rather than how one was taught that was a fact! Optimistic view of the world was matched by her palette which, once freed of conventional soberness, began to glow with bright, sunny colors. The expanses re-created in her paintings were filled with light and air which demonstrated her astonishing ability to perceive nature as a combination of many variable elements.
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Landscapes offer an ideal subject being a window of nature. They governed creative process of the primary concerns of synaesthesia in the art. Earth topography is depicted in a lot of her work. The sandy beaches, the trees on the higher ground, the coniferous forests especially wide open sky. The mysterious quality is made with the effect of light and atmosphere - the subtle impressions she sought to capture, her handling of the aurora borealis and her depiction of the sky veiled in mist or hidden behind clouds and trees. Monumental hills formations are authentic relics of ancient world tribes and like treasure, they are preserved in Milo`s art. The massive rock formation is an important symbol of faith, support. The feeling of weight and solidity is more important than structural details. The smoke placed on higher ground is transcendental image, pointing upwards toward heaven. Light and dark areas are used to symbolize life and death. The sky represents the hope of mankind, the sign of a life beyond. The wood represents the all - powerful, regenerating spirit of nature. Jelenas style in the subtlest manner paints nature as she found it, but interjects symbols to express her concept of the universe. The mystery of the universe is revealed through art: nature consciously acts through the artist and the unconscious power of art is a recreation of this universal spirit. The most prominent characteristic of nature is an overwhelming and exhaustless vital energy. Nature, as the centre of order and knowledge and as the Eternal Mind, is a philosophy present in her works.
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Jelenas landscapes are parallel to her conscious attempt to paint wide view of nature. The broad, infinite vista allowed man to live freely in nature, to experience the spirituality of the universe, and recall the past which are symbolized by distance. Only by encompassing rivers, hills, volcanoes and mountains and extending upward toward the vast sky, could the man contemplate the infinite and be the one with energy. In her paintings we feel the utter stillness of the universe, the dominance of nature in contrast to man depicted as a tiny human being. The loose brushwork of the rock formation contrasts the delicately rendered plant life, the transcendental progression from water to hill, to sky, the view of infinite distance and the dark foreground contrasts the light in the hazy distance. Nature, as the key to the eternal, as an emanation from energy, as a vehicle which transports man above and beyond the earth to a realm where he is reborn, as a mirror of mans soul, and as a means of returning man to an earlier purer world - all the important meanings to nature found visual expression in her work. An understanding of Milo`s work necessitates an acknowledgement of her deep attachment to her native land, both from a personal and artistic point of view. The eye travel into unlimited space, from hill to valley, which gives to viewer sense of melancholy I landscapes. Her imaginative paintings reveal a land of dreams, boundless regions in which time and space have no effect.
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Milos work, although controlled and dignified, is none the less intimate and personal. Many of her paintings are like soliloquies in which she expresses her innermost thoughts in a subtle manner. The viewer, rather than remaining detached from the paintings, indentifies with Milo and comes into the scene, sharing the same thoughts. We stare out into the sea along with her. We trace the footsteps of her life from painting to painting and we feel the loneliness of it. She gives us a significant signs that talk to us and allows us to follow her train of thoughts. The seascape contains many principles which form an important part of her style, melting distance where water and sky merge as one. The portrayal of a dreamlike unreal world beyond, morning light that magically floats in fluid ether. Like landscape artist she shows her visionary quality: through the addition of allegorical symbols of the landscape and they becomes more than a just a representation of nature. The progression from water to sky, the sense of longing for the past, symbolized by the distance. The water has none of the mobility and weightiness which are so masterfully brought out in the other paintings. The artists attention is concentrated on representing the atmosphere and the vibrations in the air which itself are filled with the play of light. For Milo, the act of creation was always a painful struggle. Her obsession with expressing emotions and her desire to transmit light effects over nature are much more intense than her contemporaries.
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Eternal & timeless oil on canvas 140x90cm. - 2012 Next page Deserve? Yes oil on canvas 100x80cm. - 2013
There is no evidence of human life in her painting. The inner thoughts of the artist which derive from the universe she contemplates - her awareness of mans tragic isolation and insignificance - are portrayed along with her outer self. We see not the physical Milo, but we see the inner thoughts of Milo which derive from the universe she contemplates - her awareness of man`s tragic isolation and insignificance are portrayed along without herself. Throughout her paintings Jelena was haunted by a sense of mans tragic destiny on earth, and the meaning of life and death. Her art viewed art in the broadest sense, as a fusion of nature, philosophy and as a representation of the inner and outer life of man and of the finite and the infinite. Jelena sang to the accompaniment of a magical lyre whose power transformed the natural world into the particular vision of reality.
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Jelena Milo
Lives and works in Belgrade / Dusseldorf 1979 Born in Belgrad 2004 Masterclass klasse Prof. Magdalena Jetelova, Kunstakademie Dusseldorf 1999-2004 Studies at Kunstakademie Dusseldorf 2002 -2003 Guest Student KHM, Cologne Prof. Valia Export
Solo Exhibitions
2004 Gallery Emanuel Walderdorff, Cologne 2005 Gallery Exprssns, Hamburg Gallery Remont, Belgrade, Serbia OUT/AUT Gallery of Modern Art Toronto 2006 Forum Wasserturm, Merbusch KunstHaus, Mettmann 2008 Gallery Ozon, Belgrade, Serbia 2011 Parobrod, Belgrade, Serbia MIC, Belgrade, Serbia 2012 Gallery Mladih MACUT, Novi Sad, Serbia Gallery Doma Omladine, Belgrade, Serbia Gallery SKC, Belgrade, Serbia Gallery Savremene Umetnosti, Smederevo, Serbia 2013 EU info buro, Belgrade, Serbia
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Group Exibitions
2012 Top, Legat Petra Omcikusa, Belgrade 2011 12 Rooms, House of King Peter I, Belgrade Nis Art foundation, Novi Sad, Beograd, Nis Nacht der offener Ateliers, Belgrade 2007 New Moment, Belgrade, Serbia 2006 Grosse NRW Ausstellung, Museum Kunst Palace, Dusseldorf, Germany Gallery Beograd, Belgrade, Serbia 2005 Up to no Good, Galleria Christa Schuebbe Project, Dusseldorf 2004 Womens City, ACCEA, Armenia Centre for Contemporary Experimental Art, Yerevan Klasse Jetelova, Art Factory, Prague 3rd LESSEDRA WORLD ART PRINT, National Palace of Culture, Sofia Gallery Vojtech Loffler, Kosice, Slovakia TRANSIT, Medio Rhein Erft, Bergheim Open October - Gallery Out In, Toronto jecamoonja, Abschlussarbeiten Klasse Jetelove Dusseldorf PUL, Projekt Walzwerk II, Cologne 2003 Casino Luxembourg, Hybrid-liquid, Luxembourg ALTIT UDE_KHM_Trinitatkirche, Cologne Lab Galeria, Strassburg, France 2002 150 Ochsle, Klasse Jetelove, Kunstverein Ettlingen, Ettlingen Real Presence, Museum 25.Maj, Belgrade 2001 Moscow Conference, National Centre for Contemporary Arts (NCCA), Moscow Real Presence, Gallery Zvono, Belgrade
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2000 Neu, Alte Post, Dusseldorf 1999 Kunstler Welt, Lovells B.Droste, Dusseldorf
Awards
2004 Peek & Cloppenburg Competition for young Artist, Duesseldorf Open October - Galerie Out In, Toronto, Canada
Video Festivals
2005 International Videoart Festival, Sala Estense - Ferrara, Italien Island Art Film & Video Festival, Cinema & Prenelle Gallery, London Third International Film & Video Festival The Museum of New Art, Mona, Detroit 2004 New Wave, Film Festival, Prague 2003 Utopia Travel The video-archive selected von David Rych 3. Electronic Festival of Short Forms, Belgrad
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Jelena Milo