Holy Moley

Kitsch is to Catholic as meringue is to lemon: a gaudy confection meant to mollify an essentially acrid thing. Teresa Ascencao, following the likes of Salvador Dali, Mark Ryden and Pierre et Gilles, turns that cheap gloss of the sacred into bizarre, perverse and disarmingly beautiful art. Her photograph series, entitled Maria, follows the misadventures of a Blythe-esque kewpie doll (looking very much like a black-wigged Mia Farrow from Secret Ceremony) who finds revelations in the domestic: in "Calm After the Wash," pictured above, she discovers the Virgin Mary in a bedsheet. As with real Catholic kitsch postcards, all of the photographs in Maria are 3-D lenticular, meaning the viewer must tilt her/his body/head to partake of the divine manifestation. DAVID BALZER

Maria is part of On the Cusp at A Space Gallery. To March 29. Tue-Fri 11am-6pm.
Sat, noon-5pm. 401 Richmond W, ste. 110. 416-979-9633. www.aspacegallery.org.