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 ‘Sleep’, Maiuri superimposes three female figures in paint, creating a multiple exposure effect derived from film. Rendered in paint, she writes, the layering technique ‘complicates the direction of time and permanence of place’; permanent states of identity and (un)consciousness are equally dissolved into a plurality, inviting a sense of profound uncertainty. Characteristically, the small scale of ‘Sleep’ tows the line between intimacy and confinement, and invites a questioning of what we cannot see or understand; the work’s setting, a surreal, alternative and mystifying realm, is reaffirmed.