LOTHAR OSTERBURG
Adjunct Instructor

"Greek Windmill on Snowbank," photogravure on Somerset paper with Kozo chine colle, 14" x 11", 2002
(click on image for larger view)

Lothar Osterburg teaches the Etching Workshop at the Cooper Union School of Art.

Originally from Braunschweig, Germany, Osterburg lives and works in New York City. He is a master printer in etching and photogravure and has collaborated with such artists as Lee Friedlander, Sol LeWitt, Wayne Thiebaud, Jim Dine, Pat Steir and Adam Fuss. Osterburg has exhibited widely throughout Europe, Japan, and the US, and his work is included in numerous public and private collections.

In his own work, Osterburg photographs tiny models constructed from memory. Often no more than a few inches across, he fashions them from readily available materials - vegetables, toothpicks, electronic debris - rescued from dumpsters and the street. He places them in larger environments, also using found materials, then photographs them through a magnifying glass or macro lens so that they appear life-size. In his use of photogravure, Osterburg follows a late-19th and early 20th-century photographic tradition. Through mastery of its exacting platemaking and printing techniques, he is able to exert precise visual control. Photogravure's soft focus, long and rich tonal range, incorporation of scratches and other traces of the printmaking process, and use of rough, unfinished models work together to suspend Osterburg's final images somewhere between real and imaginary realms.

Osterburg was awarded fellowships at the MacDowell Colony in 1996, 1997, and 2002 and a grant by the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2004. He is currently on the faculty of Bard College.

www.lotharosterburgphotogravure.com

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