Collage
Artist’s Statement
The Movie Palace and Greed share a theater context, a recurring theme in my collage work. It signals viewers to suspend disbelief. Drawing on this context is helpful for photomontage, as the form is inherently surreal. This surrealism is particularly evident in the more freeform compositions of Gluttony and The Finer Things. These two also share a sense of hedonism. Meanwhile, Gluttony is the series-mate of Greed—two of Seven Deadly Sins collages. The Finer Things‘ aluminum foil reflects back to Greed as well.
Allison Strauss was born in Los Angeles in 1990. She participated in increasingly competitive art education programs throughout her youth, and interned at Peter Fetterman Gallery, which holds one of the largest inventories of classic twentieth century photography in the U.S. Allison earned her BA in Art from Colorado College in 2012, with senior thesis work in book art. Back in Los Angeles, she assisted at the former Offramp Gallery. She attended the MFA in Visual Studies program at Pacific Northwest College of Art in Fall 2017, deciding in 2018 she was prepared to begin her career. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.