Yesterday the Stranger Suggested: ‘Firefall’

Meet Nadia Abdelrhman, a Stranger reader who has vowed to do everything The Stranger suggests for the entire month of March. Look for her reports daily on Slog and Line Out. —Eds.

Platform Gallery is currently showing Michael Schall’s series Firefall. In it, Schall’s graphite drawings sculpt the depths of light and dark directly into paper with thousands of meticulous lines. His work reminds me of man’s often dissociative relationship with nature. Some of the larger pieces detail man-made structures in an apparent battle for the conquest of their natural surroundings; in one, the Hoover Dam looks like an alien construction. Smaller drawings—part of a 20-piece series commissioned as illustrations for an upcoming McSweeney’s volume—depict the mundane to the surreal: a garbage truck hovering above ground with the aid of helium balloons, a claw-foot bathtub full of entrails, a blanket, a lone rhinoceros with textured skin. Drawn from his imagination, Schall’s work is a window into an alternate, yet familiar, universe. Approved.