What comes to mind when considering this show is the post-war imagery that came from German artists like Hannah Höch, George Grosz, Otto Dix, and Rudolf Schlichter. They each attempted to reconcile, in some fashion, the prolific corporeal monstrosity that came about as a result of the First World War. Lots of disfigured faces, bodies, dismembered parts, crude surgical reconstructions, horrors exorcized through violent inks, paints, shredded paper and torn photographs . . .
Troy's work in Monument, while reiterating some of the (tragically) recurring motifs of absent limbs and physical loss, doesn't approach the subject with the kind of shell-socked humor and grotesquerie that is often historically glazed over this difficult subject. Instead, a very naked kind of grieving is communicated, and the seemingly inappropriate appropriation of pop material and iconography in this context actually helps clear the air of irony, (somehow) kitsch, or other coping mechanisms. Who hasn't played with or come across, as a child, a dismembered Barbie doll (or a G.I. Joe)? As a child it's usually just funny to throw around these deconstructed dummies, but to return to the site of these childish things as an adult and in such a heavily symbolic atmosphere is very touching, not to mention uncanny.
(PS. Also see Ryan Molenkamp's review over at the CAB)
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