Distance & Trace Exhibit at UTD Will Explore Contrast Between Original, Copy

RICHARDSON, Texas (Feb. 22, 2006) — Distance & Trace, an exhibit that explores the contrast between an original and its copy, will be on display in the Visual Arts Gallery at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) March 17 through April 15. 

The photography and digital media exhibit investigates how a particular subject or material is altered through lens-based, digitally-based or print-based processes.  The resulting images capture artists’ concepts of the real, the copy, the dream and the imagined. 

The exhibition will feature the works of eight artists, hailing from Texas to New York, including Stephanie Dinkins, Anni Holm, Debora Hunter, Edwin Jager, Elizabeth Mellott-Carreón, Steven H. Silberg, John O. Smith and Kevin Todora. 

Marilyn Waligore, an associate professor of photography at UTD, will serve as curator of the exhibit. 

Holm, Todora, Silberg and Dinkins employ digital media.  Holm’s large-scale portraits of international students, generated by a matrix of life-size copies of their own fingerprints, comment on the use of data archives to monitor individuals.  Todora creates serial portraits that float in a sea of exaggerated half-tone dots, reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s famous celebrity paintings.  Silberg introduces noise into his DVD project, Bit Transformation, to visualize the degradation of data.  Dinkins scans random arrangements of human hair into a computer to produce her Hair Drawings, challenging the distinction made between drawing and digital image acquisition.

Hunter, Mellott-Carreón, Smith and Jager compare the real with the imagined or the replica.  Hunter photographs model airplanes previously displayed at Dallas’ Frontiers of Flight museum.  Mellott-Careón constructs dioramas based partly on “her imagination of what war is like” and partly on her soldier husband’s experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Smith and Jager collaborate on a book and website project, Threshold, which offers a narrative of two fictional characters “in a world where the borders between the real and the imagined are tenuous.”

Holm, an award-winning artist whose primary media are digital imaging and photography, will give a talk at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, March 17 in UTD’s Visual Arts Gallery.  An opening reception will take place later that day, from 6:30 to 9 p.m. 

Distance & Trace is free and open to the public.  The Visual Arts Building is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. and on Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.  The gallery is closed on Sunday.

More information about this event may be found at http://ah.utdallas.edu/season0506/distance.htm.

For information about the many musical, arts, theatre, dance and other performances and exhibitions held throughout the year at UTD, please call 972-UTD-ARTS (972-883-2787), e-mail utdarts@utdallas.edu, or visit the School of Arts and Humanities’ Web site at http://ah.utdallas.edu.  Persons with disabilities needing special accommodations may call 972-883-2982, Texas Relay Operator: 1-800-RELAYVV.

About UTD

The University of Texas at Dallas, located at the convergence of Richardson, Plano and Dallas in the heart of the complex of major multinational technology corporations known as the Telecom Corridor®, enrolls nearly 14,500 students.  The school’s freshman class traditionally stands at the forefront of Texas state universities in terms of average SAT scores.  The university offers a broad assortment of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs.  For additional information about UTD, please visit the university’s Web site at www.utdallas.edu.