Disorienting and mysterious, the stunning works of Tania Franco Klein—both her photographs and her exhibition design—are studies in tension, space and texture. Her photographs of female subjects in mostly domestic settings are suspenseful and cinematic: a woman walks away from a stove with a pan on fire, another sits in a bathtub of water wearing a bra and skirt, about to poke her eye with a metal fork. Alluding to the feeling of being trapped in the home, these photos touch on loneliness and self-destruction while looking at the environments in a new way (in some of them, it’s hard to tell where the photo was taken), and the gallery is similarly transformed. Golden streamers cover several of the walls, highlighting the warmth in many of her images, while the photos vary in size and placement, some overlapping or ascending the walls. The overall effect is moving, both beautiful and uncomfortable, slightly surreal, making the familiar strange.

Tania Franco Klein: “Break in Case of Emergency (Flies, Forks, and Fires)”
ROSEGALLERY
Bergamot Station Arts Center
2525 Michigan Avenue, B-7, Santa Monica, CA 90404
On view through June 3, 2023