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November 2006

La Petite Mort Gallery invites you to see the new paintings & drawings by Graham Robinson aka BEASTON entitled “And You’re Too Ugly And I’m Too Fat”, at 306 Cumberland Street corner Murray in Ottawa. The vernissage is Friday November 3rd, from 7-10pm with tunes by Big Mac Daddy. The exhibit runs from November 3 to December 1, 2006.

Quote from UPFRONT Magazine:
” Robinson has been using the name Beaston since early high school. Originally developed as a graffiti tag, Graham has moved on and now uses it to sign his professional work. The name is appropriate in regards to his subjects. He depicts abstract backgrounds with “slumping fats,” hulking and numbered men, with smoking holes in their back. These creatures are omnipresent in his work and sport numbers to convey their assembly-line quality and to offset their organic appearance. The smoking holes started as a purely visual element and evolved into representation of ‘spatial destruction and how people invade and claim space’. They are unconventional and compelling”.  The Underdog Issue, Sept 2006
Artist statement:  

“Creating tranquil space and then destroying it. Definitions beauty and ugliness, these are the ideas I explore in my paintings. The creation of space is something everyone can identify with; buying a house, a car, furniture, they feather a nest that they can feel at home in. But what happens when they destroy that space they worked so hard to create? Billowing, smoky exhaust is the realization of the unhappiness I feel about my own environments.  

There’s beauty in the breakdown. I find beauty in the destruction of a luscious, tranquil, empty space.  There is beauty in a person who is content with themselves as they are and what they do. The characters I paint are happy with their mission and their cause. They are fat, warty and by all common standards they are ugly.  

They are beautiful. They survey the organic canvas that they will soon lay waste to. The smoke they release from the holes in their bodies is the way make a home. They create an environment that, like them, appears to be ugly, but isn’t necessarily so.  What is it you’ve done to make them turn their backs to you? ” Graham Robinson, 2006

Thank you,

Guy Berube / director / www.guyberube.com

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