Raïssa Venables

New York artist Raïssa Venables has said that her altered color photographs, dreamlike interiors, "aim to provoke a visceral interpretation of the ordinary places of our lives." They are spaces created--as in a dream--by combining the real with the remembered, the feared and the desired, interweaving parts of existing parlors, hallways, staircases, elevators and tents into mysterious tableaux. "Double Bedroom" plumps up two beds to fill a tiny space, generating claustrophobia and the sense that the room may be a bit alive--the pink fleshiness of the carpet and the voluminous coverlets give it a creepy, near-human personality. Venables's work suggests inhabitants, strange happenings, reveries and stories, all the tales a place can hold. This, her first monograph, includes an interview by the esteemed Lori Waxman.