John Robinson

The works of John Robinson approach representation through retro-painting techniques that date back to the 17th and 18th centuries, echoing old masters such as Velazquez, Goya and van Dyck. He has taken a particular cue from the latter and his use of the grisaille method, where colour can only be suggested as a stand-in for our imagination. His paintings however, are strangely familiar and appear immediately updated to an acute nowness. The genesis of their contemporaneity stem in large parts from performance art and the happenings of the 1960’s, but there is something else that is activated in the paintings of John Robinson, something that is closer to contemporary on-line viral meme and humiliation culture that literally tear signifiers of meaning apart to reuse it for the purpose of entertainment.