Exhibitions

Modeling the Photographic: The End(s) of Photography
February 23 - March 23, 2007

Modeling the Photographic: The End(s) of Photography, organized by Saul Ostrow for the McDonough Museum, Youngstown State University, surveys the effects that photography’s doppelganger, the digital image is having on the practices of artists and photographers. Though few, if any of the artists included actually make photographs in the traditional sense of camera and darkroom, all use photography as their reference, demonstrating the continued attraction its effects and appearances have on us. What does unite their work is that whether simulating the look of the hyper-real, the phantasmagoric, the abstract, or the “actual,” or engaging issues of documentation, representation, and reproduction the works in this exhibition make no particular claims outside of the specificity of their medium, to truthfulness, or objectivity. Along with such nationally and internationally recognized artists as, James Welling, Barbara Probst, Fabian Marcaccio, Joseph Nechvatal, Curtis Mitchell, Matthew Buckingham, and Penny Umbrico, this exhibition includes work by Ohio artists; Bruce Checefsky, Michael DeFabbo, Troy Richards/Knute Hybinette, Dan Tranberg, Barry Underwood and Kelli Connell.

There will be a panel discussion entitled, “Whatever Ever Happened to Photography?” The panel will explore the issues faced by artists, photographers, historians and curators as digital technologies redefine the nature of the photographic image and as other traditional mediums come to be annexed and subsumed by the experiences and aesthetics of the media-sphere.

Panel participants include: Saul Ostrow, Dan Tranberg, Shirley Irons, and Kelli Connell.

Saul Ostrow is Chair of Visual Arts and Technologies, as well as Head of Painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art. He is the Editor of the book series Critical Voices in Art, Theory and Culture published by Routledge, UK, the Art Editor for Bomb Magazine and was Co-Editor of Lusitania Press (1996-2004.) Since1987, he has curated over 70 exhibitions in the US and abroad. His writings have appeared in numerous art magazines, journals, catalogues and books in the USA and Europe.