Things in a Room (Untitled #6)

Manuel Franquelo pushes photography’s capacity for illusion to an astonishing degree—an extreme example of what digital technologies can achieve, even as it harkens back to the trompe l’oeil paintings of 19th-century American artists and Old Master precedents. As astonishing as the technology is, Franquelo’s Things in a Room entrances the viewer at least as much by its content, the personal ephemera, and casual residue of some 30 years of life in the studio—notes, postcards, letters, photographs, bank receipts, and keys seemingly held in place on the door by magnets.