Art, painting in particular, is an excellent medium through which to vent social and political outrage. Whereas with other media, scenes of the carnage of war, for instance, can be repellent; paint, when it is applied with skill to canvas, is seductive. Therefore, painting can retain the attention of a viewer while the artist gets her message across. Liana Strasberg’s compositions are certainly potent in their protest against violence, particularly when the victims arte women and children, as is so often the case, but they are conceived, first and foremost, in artistic terms. For instance, a group of tanks that is menacing civilians is rendered with an eye for the pattern that is formed by the raised shafts of their cannon and the rhythm that is established by their wheels.

Including both, photograph and painted images, on the same canvas is a tricky business, because the exactness and the detail rich photo image can make the painted image seem vague and simplistic. Strasberg deals with this by eschewing detail and exactitude in her painting and emphasizing bold, concise drawing. The photographs are presented like documents to verify the drawn images of awful events. That artist’s method is to alternate anonymous details that are not, in themselves, disturbing, such as a close-up of a person’s feet or hands, with a large rendering or photograph of a specific victim. Individual tragedies are pitted against large and terrible events.

Strasberg never directly confronts the viewer with violent acts. Tanks are not firing, and no one is bleeding or dying. Rather, she presents the ever present environment of hatred and violence, which is more terrifying than the acts themselves. Mug shots of prisoners, with their look of resigned anguish, speak more eloquently of the war they were caught in than the battles themselves. Her objective is to bring a human face to the anonymous misery of war and ethnic strife.

[rojo]Nicholas Bergman[/rojo]
Gallerist. Caellum Gallery. New York, NY