(re)construct: exploring objecthood in a digital age

The following paper describes the conceptual framework and several works in the exhibition: (re)construct: exploring objecthood in a digital age, which was on view at the Laura Mesaros Gallery at the College of Creative Arts, West Virginia University. The exhibition ran from November 30th through December 11th, 2009. The exhibition consisted of both oil paintings on clear acrylic and ink jet photographs. The question which this paper and the exhibition attempts to address is: what are the ontology and the limits of hyperreality in contemporary society? The following paper and the exhibition is epistemologically based and asks the following questions: Are we in a continuous state of the hyperreal, as theorist Jean Baudrillard (1929--2009) suggested, or are we in a state of flux between the real and the hyperreal? And further, what place does the handmade play in contemporary society and art making? The work and the paper assert that the handmade, the sense of objecthood and physical manipulation in the works, dislocates the digital referent, which is suggested through both process and image