Happy Birthday (Polyclens Transfers)

Carolyn Wren wrote for show ?COLLECTED STORIES side by eacy? at the Impact Artists? Gallery in Buffalo, New York, USA in 2002:  ?Claudette Losier?s work, entitled ?Happy Birthday?, is a grouping of many small panels placed randomly on the wall.  The 54 panels are photo transfers of variations of the same snapshot of a family birthday party.  This haunting work epitomizes the dysfunctional family, sitting around the table waiting for the wish that the candled cake will bring.  Losier, the third of four girls, and her mother are caught in the picture while her father snaps the photo.  Losier captures a strange emptiness of a very familiar scene in her treatment of the subject.  The technique lends itself to ethereal outcomes and Losier makes the most of it.  By cropping and enlarging, she reduces some areas to mere abstraction.  Unlike Simizu?s idealized memories of her aunt, these blurred figures are isolated, and unable to interact with each other.  They stand alone in a group of introspection and grief.  Like clues in a riddle, the viewer is given hints of the tension in the narrative.  Family values and the clich? of the happy home are in question, and Losier?s catharsis enables the viewer to reflect on middle class belief structures.?