NADA Miami 2022

Julia Maiuri’s oil paintings recast depictions of the ordinary into premonitions of the unknown. Desaturated hues and selective colours transport her works out of the real and into a dreamscape, an adjacent plane. By layering, superimposing, cropping and reversing images sourced primarily from suspense and horror films, Maiuri imbues her works with a lingering sense of uncertainty, seizing the viewer in a moment that is neither here nor there, but exactly in-between, and governed by a new, surreal logic; when viewed together, her paintings function like a dream sequence, a disjointed narrative that doesn’t quite hold.

In ‘Window’, Maiuri takes a still from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film Rear Window (1954) as her source material. Rendered at a transitional moment of multiple exposure, Lisa’s face is superimposed upon a window’s interior, itself a symbol of concealment, revelation, and transitional spaces. In the tension between the positions of knowledge and mystification, a drama plays out, with a sense of foreboding. Enhancing this, Maiuri’s use of the eyes motif, here, directs our attention toward the unseen: Lisa gazes away from the viewer, toward some unknown presence beyond view.