Gina Osterloh (b. 1973, the Philippines) graduated from the De Paul University of Chicago with a Bachelor in Communications/Media Studies and gained her MFA in the University of California Irvine. Gina has exhibited in UTS Gallery, Sydney, Australia; Osage Gallery in Kwun Tong, Hong Kong; Museum of the Filipino People in Manila, Philippines and also California Museum of Photography in the United States. More recently, she received a Fulbright Grant for her research on 'Surrealism and Contemporary Art in the Philippines' in 2008. 


STATEMENT

Shooting Blanks series is based upon the impotence and futility of language, dislocation, and the desire to connect. In each of my lush, mostly large-scale photographs, I address the body and its surrounding environment as symbiotic physical and psychological spaces. Through metaphors of camouflage and non-verbal sensations of the body, a porous boundary of the body becomes visible.

The environments or rooms I built for Shooting Blanks are constructed from coloured office bond paper found in Manila. In many of my photographs, the room itself is treated as a second skin, created through hundreds of paper cuts. In Blind Rash, the room is constructed from hundreds of pink skin-scale or camera shutter like shapes. A young woman poses for the camera, yet her eyes are covered, cutting basic means of perception and denying access to the viewer. In Cut (Pairs) two figures on all fours slouch over, as their bodies articulate the same paper cuts as the surrounding room, yet only partially match in colour.

It is through this mis-articulation via mimicry in language, that slippage occurs, and restrained desires misfire. While previous works insisted upon the use of my own body, Shooting Blanks marks a pivotal shift – as my work expands to incorporate other bodies and in some photographs, allows the body to disappear altogether, leaving the room blank.