Art Department, Arkansas State University, Jonesboro

The China Collés #1

Conrad Ross

July 24 through August 25, 2000

There are two images on this page. China #4 China #7

Conrad Ross is an important American artist/printmaker who has been described as "a contemporary Marco Polo". He constructs images that refer to cultures that were once remote from us in times before modern travel, media, and the Internet.   Each monoprint in this exhibition was created by pasting various printed images and types of paper to an underlying paper support. The term "collé" (pronounced "co-LAY", sometimes called "collage") is a French word which refers to an artistic composition made up of diverse fragments of paper and printed materials pasted together.   The exhibition consists of nine handmade monoprints that were created in 1995 at Wycross Press in Auburn, Alabama. In these prints, Ross depicts the politics and personalities that pushed the Yunnan Dam project despite its impact on China's ecology and its destructive social consequences.   Rich textures and organic shapes contrast sharply with geometric shapes. Decorative combinations of Asian papers and the fusion of digitized and traditional imagery remind us of relationships between imagery and ideas. Excerpts of poetry composed by dissident poets clarify the conflict between pastoral China and progressive China.   Ross was especially interested in the poetry of a group of young Chinese writers who were called the "misty poets".   "The China Collés" were exhibited last year at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. The museum's exhibition catalog states that these prints portray an altered environment "obscured by newspaper photographs of political leaders like Deng Xiaoping, recently China's most powerful political cult figure".   "In his markmaking, Conrad Ross visualizes an exotic fragment of the Asian universe he has just begun to explore." Ross made a nine-city trip to China as a Fulbright-Hays scholar, studying the art of that country. "Experiences seeing eleventh-century Chinese landscape scrolls, skimming across the Western Lake of Hangchow in a boat, entering the hush of sacred gardens and pavilions, and joining the crush of humanity in Shanghai's commercial district fused with his expanding awareness of Chinese history and politics."