This August, LA-based artist Gina Osterloh opens silverlens with Body Prop, a successor of her exhibits known for their room-sized sets.

Often using the body to complete her work’s messages, Osterloh works with characteristics that are readily accessible – simple color palettes (red and black; white and grey; and blue); the use of portraiture; and material such as paper and cardboard. The structure of the set combined with the positions of the bodies creates a play between two and three-dimensionality, where characters and patterns share similarities in order to make their differences visible. 

Body Prop’s figures possess straightforwardness because of seemingly recognizable human acts – making the peace sign, raising arms and sitting. The contact, however, that an observer tries to make with these figures is not reciprocal because of the absence of a face, and other bodily details that are blotted out. Through familiar and conventional portraiture the viewer is encouraged to engage in the act of looking, while play with pattern and camouflage diffuses vision.

By use of forced perspective with the camera and the manipulation of flatness, three-dimensionality and pattern, Body Prop creates an uneasy ground between portraiture and abstraction.

Osterloh holds a Masteral Degree in Fine Arts, Studio Art from the University of California, Irvine. In 2007, she received a Fulbright grant to research on surrealism and contemporary art in the Philippines. She has exhibited widely in countries including the US, Philippines, Portugal, Malaysia and Australia.

Words by Jel Tordesillas