The Words Are Coming

"Slavery wages and the fall of markets in a worldwide domino context has been growing for at least ten years with the ugly art milieu laughing all the way to the golden egg. Beuys tried to open the satire world of the art market but saw an impossible context and died realizing art was a commodity shelter for the rich only. Years later Koons and Hirst via Warhol strangle the young and screw the poor and downtrodden. Having lived in NY during the 70's we saw the last visages from the street walkers to the mental patients living on garbage in the back of restaurants till one brilliant restaurant owner decided to share the food leftovers and the idea caught on. Here in Toronto the mentally ill beg and beg daily earning enough to buy a pack of smokes or go inside for a coffee. The context of art living with the poor is the closest face to face mirror the artist will ever see. With years of seeing the double life amidst a sea of wealth my last refuge is reading the few books we have kept for over forty years. With the markets trading with human flesh the sea of blood follows investors like rats eating beef salads. Whenever a barrel of oil drops a dollar the oil world loses a billion but the next day at 10am the trading sinks another human covered in flies with no water or rice as investors share the margins and to hell with starvation. We have seen it all but the context keeps me alive and with my fingers on a loonie or toonie we pass the streets day after day knowing we have a warm studio and a great many friends over the years who have helped the idiot fight a battle that is always killing children especially in Africa and Asia where the most one can live on is three cents a day. Cooking rats for dinner and eating dead cows is a way of life few of us will ever know. Spinoza saved my humour and the ETHICS masterpiece we look at during the worst of times but we are not in the middle ages, it just seems like the middle ages."

Ron Giii
October 8, 2008
Paul Petro