Mixed Media

CUTAWAY

Solo show, Gallery NAGA

“Loretta Harms' first solo show at Gallery NAGA employs photographic, print, and collage processes to create composite imagery. Each work incorporates film stills, photo-silkscreens of Victorian children's illustrations printed on the backs of mirrors and layered glass. The images are oddly cropped, giving just a tease of information. While the medium is high-tech, the mood is gothic; everyday events take on an ominous cast. The film stills come from the Alfred Hitchcock movies "Marnie" and "Spellbound." Both films revolve around characters with amnesia; the slow revelation of their identities builds suspense. Harms is coaxing some Hitchcockian angst into the frozen photographic moment, with enigmatic stills from the films juxtaposed with equally confounding imagery.

Blown up and recontextualized, these images become elusive and disquieting. A recurring silkscreen of a needle being threaded suggests the possibility of coherence, but it also evokes violence (and, indeed in the film Marnie's amnesia is revealed to be grounded in a murderous act). While Hitchcock gives the audience the cathartic release of knowledge, Harms keeps the viewer suspended, devoid of resolution.” – NANCY STAPEN, Boston Globe, Living Arts Section