In nearly all of Mr. Colson's works, the combination of modesty and grandiosity, of mental exactness and physical imprecision adds up to an odd, sad beauty. Elliptical as they are, his pieces often seem to scrutinize the conflict between the active center and deserted margins of industrialized society.
-Roberta Smith, New York Times, Jan. 5, 1990
Published in1988 by Sam Francis at The Lapis Press, Corn Belt is an artist book bound in full terra cotta-colored pigskin housed in a pictorial paper-over-boards slipcase. Corn Belt is comprised of a title page, table of contents, eleven artworks in various media (seven lithographs two etchings, one color photograph and one photogravure) and a signed and editioned colophon.
A single page etching with letterpress was released separately, also in 1988.
Greg Colson is an American artist whose art is marked by the jarringly direct way he commingles material and conceptual elements. In his constructions, precisely rendered systems are disrupted and contradicted by the contexts they are placed in. By drawing out the poetry and humor in our social patterns, Colson seems to suggest there are limits to - and hazards inherent in - our obsession with efficiency, data, and analysis of every kind. His work has been the subject of exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe, including Patrick Painter Inc., LA; Sperone Westwater, NY; Kayne Griffin Corcoran, LA; Galleria Cardi, Milan; Kunsthalle Lophem, Bruges; Konrad Fischer, Dusseldorf; Baldwin Gallery, Aspen; and the Lannan Museum, Lake Worth, FL. His work is in many public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The Museum of Modern Art, NY; the Museum of Contemporary Art, LA; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LA; Hammer Museum, LA; the Panza Collection, Varese, Italy; Sammlung Rosenkranz, Berlin; Thomas Ammann Collection; and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm.