By Marie Harnett | Were you dreaming?
Cristea Roberts Gallery is set to open an exhibition of new drawings by Marie Harnett, running from 2 May to 8 June 2025.
This marks Harnett’s fourth solo show with the gallery, featuring twenty-five intricate works on paper that depict tender, decadent, and dream-like scenes inspired by contemporary film, Greek mythology, and Old Master paintings.
Harnett is best known for her hyper-realistic pencil drawings, which begin with film stills sourced from a diverse range of trailers. She sifts through hundreds of trailers, intuitively selecting frames that encapsulate a particular atmosphere. This process results in fragmented scenes that allude to classical myth and tragedy, particularly the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice—lovers separated by death. Harnett’s tableaux collectively inhabit the same world, forming part of a new narrative that is not quite our own: a woman framed in a window holding a coin; a man holding the head of a broken statue; the façade of a building concealed by thick foliage. These unexpected scenes are committed to paper, imbued with drama and suspense, inviting viewers to become active protagonists in the act of observing and being observed.
Pairing the ancient with the modern, Harnett creates what she describes as an “other world, an underworld, a mirror world, that is frozen in time.” Her use of graphite collaging produces images that are surreal and uncanny; characters from period films are blended and recontextualized with backgrounds sourced from mythological paintings. In “for you alone” (2024), a man in modern dress is transposed into the landscape of “Orpheus” (1628) by Roelandt Savery. Drawing inspiration from Baroque and Renaissance sculptors such as Bernini and Michelangelo, several works, including “Half agony, half hope” (2024), depict marble statues that appear in film. Harnett experiments with pencil to create the illusion of subjects suspended in time.
Additionally, Harnett presents drawings that take the form of photographs; in “Love has an earlier death” and “You’ve cast a spell” (both 2024), a jelly-like trifle is shown in both positive and negative versions. Through this method, Harnett highlights the sculptural quality of drawing, establishing distorted parallels in shades of light and dark. Her titles are selected from the audio of the trailers she watches, pairing image and word to create a new staging and cast of characters connected to themes of loss, love, yearning, and grief.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication featuring an interview with the artist. “Marie Harnett: Were you dreaming?” takes place during the 2025 edition of London Gallery Weekend (5–8 June 2025), during which the artist will give a public talk, and the show will have extended hours.
