An opening night virtual tour through artist Nancy Gershman’s 2008-9 solo show at The Loyola University Museum of Art in Chicago.  featuring commissioned works of wishful reality in the form of fine art digital photomontages – created for people in emotional pain due to bereavement, addictive behaviors and relationship rifts.

“Through a series of extended conversations with the individuals suffering loss, Gershman becomes a translator of their memories, solidifying these personal mythologies into an extant form constructed from old photographs and digitally added elements. The result is what could be described as part icon and part memorial, and challenges the assumption of order …

Gershman’s photomontages reference 20th-century artists Hannah Höch and Joseph Cornell, and filmmakers Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali, and René Clair, whose use of collage, assemblage, and montage probed the human subconscious for hidden or mythic meanings. Gershman’s work, however, is more akin to the magic realism of Latin American, Spanish, and Portuguese writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, or José Saramago, who mingle the mundane with the fantastic …”

– Curator: Pamela E. Ambrose, Director, LUMA

Read LUMA Curator Pam Ambrose’s comments in full