ARTIST TALK: GREG ITO

Using symbols and a visual language that draws upon of his hometown Los Angeles—and the five generations his family has lived there, Greg Ito’s cinematic painting style seeks to explore the precariousness of life and desire for security. The artist is fundamentally a storyteller; he effectuates rumination on the collective through the deeply personal —a desire for an evolution, a cultural reset. Informed by his grandparents’ experience as interned Japanese-Americans during World War II, the sense of “home” as a refuge from the outside world is a fleeting and fragile one.

Ito’s paintings and installations address themes of time, love, loss, hope, and tragedy. Ito’s dream-like worlds open portals to alternate timelines where daily life dilates into fantasy. The artist draws from an ever-expanding lexicon of symbols and imagery ranging from burning candles, keyholes, and windows, to snakes, moons, and suns. His distinct off-nature palette depicts scenes of wildfires, disaster, and destruction, that simultaneously assert an optimistic outlook in uncertain times as he fills his work with icons of new life—growing vines, flittering butterflies, and transcendent skies.

Greg Ito (b. 1987, Los Angeles, CA) embraces a graphic visual style to create cinematic paintings and installations that address themes of time, love, loss, hope, and tragedy. Ito earned his BFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 2008. His work has been exhibited widely in group and solo exhibitions including Maki Gallery, Tokyo, Japan; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; Division Gallery, Montreal, QC; Arsenal Contemporary, Toronto, ON; Jeffrey Deitch New York, NY; Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago, IL; Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles, CA; Et al, San Francisco, CA; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts –YBCA, San Francisco, CA. A forthcoming solo exhibition at Anat Ebgi Los Angeles will open Fall 2021. Ito lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.