ANGELA STRASSHEIM
Left Behind
March 24 through April 30, 2005

Shortlist: Photo
by Vince Aletti
April 13-19, 2005

Hard to know just what to make of Angela Strassheim’s maniacally accomplished debut show, perhaps because her big color photos blur the line between fact and fiction to such unsettling effect. Among her subjects are her father, her brother and his young son, and her grandmother, the last seen laid out in a pink-lined coffin, all presented as if embalmed by convention. Other photos record the loosening or breakdown of those conventions, none more forcefully than the staged image of a naked young suicide victim twisted grotesquely on her rumpled bed.