INAPPROPRIATELY BEAUTIFUL

ELICSER ELLIOTT

FROM JULY 20TH TO AUGUST 14TH
OPENING JULY 22ND, 2011 FROM 7-10PM

There is beauty in everything, no matter how bleak.
“Inappropriately Beautiful” exists in the space between hesitant thought and the deciding moment.
“You know better!” but you just can’t pass it up.
It’s the grey area between you and her.
It’s a cop car on fire on your street.
It’s how you felt with your first porno Mag.
It’s blacksploitation.
It’s the long walk home the morning after.
It’s the last cold beer.
It’s sex in a truck yard.
Inappropriate things are sometimes beautiful… beautiful things are almost always inappropriate… and acknowledging one without the other would be a shame.
~ Elicser Elliott

Inappropriately Beautiful, the second solo exhibition at LE Gallery for Elicser Elliott finds him continuing to explore narrative structures, new surfaces, and new sensations, always through the lens of more than a decade spent in the global street art community. A distinctive character based practice, The work of Elicser is highly visible in major cities from Toronto to South America. His work was recently featured at the Institute for Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum.

At a time when Torontonians find their civic decisions often decided for them, the graffiti debate rages in a city where the creative talent borne from the alleys and walls of the urban infrastructure is flourishing. Elicser Elliott leads the charge in the character based movement in Toronto. Known for his intuitive ability to capture the essence of a subject, his work is quick and intense frames subjects from Children on the street to homages to greats like the late great Michael Jackson. Produced almost exclusively on donated surfaces from a local bakery, metal pan sheets and bread boards to name a few, the work finds a parallel to the often cutthroat territory of the city’s food/chef scene.