For Sasnal, painting is imperative as a means to challenge traditional expectations of representation and perception. Through the personal intervention of making, his subject matter becomes distorted. Images are pared down to their barest essentials and estranged from their original context and meaning.

Portrait after Rodchenko, Lady resurrects the photographer's iconic image. Gone is her golden Soviet virtue, replaced by a fiercely dark shadow. Sasnal's reconstruction is a hollow memento, a death mask of a graven image.