Book Description

The exhibition catalogue "Gina Osterloh: Mirror Shadow Shape" will accompany an exhibition of thesame name at the Columbus Museum of Art in Columbus, Ohio. This catalogue will be the first full monograph and survey of artist Gina Osterloh's work. Osterloh, a Filipino-American artist, uses photography to mine her own history to pose questions about identity that are both intellectually and aesthetically compelling to wider audiences. Both the exhibition and its catalogue focus on the cogent development of ideas set forth by Osterloh in photographic series that span a period of fifteen years (2005-2020). Osterloh's practice is unique for how it has seamlessly blended photography, film, performance, anddrawing-creating a sustained engagement with a rigorous set of questions across radically differentmanifestations. The series Osterloh has made throughout her career to date have unfolded like a series ofpropositions. Her early work with photographic tableaus quite literally set the stage for what would become a fixation with abstraction: figures flatten into silhouettes whose forms are covered by the same patternedbackdrops into which they are set; bodies are emptied of viscera and filled with paper; and heads are turneddown and away from the camera, becoming faceless portraits. While these works challenge photographicconventions, however, they also engage self-reflexively with the medium's history. The catalogue will be richly illustrated with full color plates and include a foreword by Tyler Cann,Director of Exhibitions and Pizzuti Family Curator of Contemporary Art of the Columbus Museum of Art; anintroductory essay by Anna Lee, the exhibition curator; an academic essay by art historian Ellen Tani; anartist conversation/interview between Osterloh and artist Sheilah ReStack; and chronology with key works,concepts, and events in Osterloh's career.