Can You Tell Me How The West Was Won 5

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Collage on paper
14 x 10.5 in.
2010

  Can You Tell Me How The West Was Won is a series of collages that looks at the spirit of exploration and the complicated notion of Manifest Destiny. As it was written, it was that pioneering spirit that made America great as a young nation came to be born. But the passive telling of this story masks and belies a complexity that would have serious ramifications throughout the history of our country up until today. 

By juxtaposing portraits of unknown “cowboys” from the American West over top of portraits of the Apollo Astronauts, I am essentially obscuring their identities, in order to shift focus from personality to the larger, general effects of exploration, imperialism and expansion. 

I am seeking to create a conversation driven by viewers in response to these collages and the play between the formal anomalies of each found photo as they become exploited to create an altogether new visual experience.

  "Texas-raised artist Erik Parra’s collage works prominently feature photographic images with an abiding retro aesthetic (probably because they appear to be actual old photographs), dappled with blobs or confetti-like clouds of color. The appealing result is vibrant and surprising, humorous but also a bit eerie, as colors creep into a black-and-white plane like so many stills from a forgotten, more austere version of Pleasantville (1998). Though perhaps it’s irrelevant to the ideas behind Parra’s art, this critically skewed lens on images of the not-so-distant past seems curiously complementary to the recent premier of Mad Men’s fourth season."
  —The San Francisco Bay Guardian, “Pick of the Week”, Review of Between Currencies