Biography
Chris Robertson is a contemporary printmaker working in mokuhanga, the Japanese tradition of water-based woodblock printing. Robertson's work was selected for the Sumi-Fusion Juried International Exhibition, the juried show mounted for the 2021 International Mokuhanga Conference in Nara, Japan — a competitive selection drawn from an international pool of submissions to the conference organized by the International Mokuhanga Association, the principal global body dedicated to promoting and preserving water-based woodblock printing.
The 2021 conference took place during a period when the COVID-19 pandemic had disrupted international travel, and it was held in hybrid form, with the juried exhibition presented both in Nara and online. Nara was a historically resonant setting: one of Japan's ancient capitals, it is associated with some of the earliest woodblock printing in Japan, used more than a thousand years ago to reproduce Buddhist texts. Mokuhanga demands a sensitivity that oil-based relief printing does not — to the moisture of the washi paper, the consistency of the rice-paste binder, the grain of the block, and the humidity of the workspace — and Robertson's selection for the international exhibition places his work among a peer group of practitioners committed to the medium.
Key Facts
- Nationality
- 🇺🇸United States
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
Frequently Asked Questions
Chris Robertson is a contemporary printmaker working in mokuhanga, the Japanese tradition of water-based woodblock printing. Robertson's work was selected for the Sumi-Fusion Juried International Exhibition, the juried show mounted for the 2021 International Mokuhanga Conference in Nara, Japan — a competitive selection drawn from an international pool of submissions to the conference organized by the International Mokuhanga Association, the principal global body dedicated to promoting and preserving water-based woodblock printing.
Chris Robertson's work was shaped by the Contemporary Mokuhanga tradition in Japanese woodblock printmaking. Contemporary Mokuhanga: Contemporary mokuhanga (literally "wood-block print") encompasses artists working from approximately 1970 to the present who continue or reinvent traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques.