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Parker Ito

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Parker Ito is an American artist whose work primarily consists of painting, installation, and web based imagery.[1] His internet-influenced approach to art results in large bodies of work produced in short amounts of time.[2] He has exhibited in the United States, and internationally. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.[3]

Life

Parker Ito was born in 1986 in Long Beach, California, and was raised there.[3] When Ito was younger he acted, and sang on television.[4] Before becoming a professional artist he aspired to become a professional skateboarder[5] and held a job painting oil derricks in Los Angeles.[6]

Art practice

Persona

Ito functions under many pseudonyms such as Deke McLelland Two, Creamy Dreamy, and Parker Cheeto, among others.[7] He uses these for different bodies of work as a way of complicating authorship. His practice aims to challenge authorship and authenticity in many ways. Parker has said that many of his past interviews were delivered by someone operating in his place over email.

Ito has a unique persona that he enacts in photographs, and videos in which he is seen wearing high-end designer suits or skateboarding through his studio.[2] His personal photographs are often manipulated to have further graphics added to them and deemed new works of art.

Production

Ito's working style involves hiring paid assistants to produce works. He insists on paying them a fair wage and allows for the produced works to be made in the style of the hired hand.[7] This strategy was used in Ito's body of work The Most Infamous Girl in the History of the Internet, a project created while he was still attending California College of the Arts in Oakland.[7] For this work, a popular stock photo which features a young girl wearing a backpack on a college campus was manually reproduced and manipulated through painting in several different styles and interpretations. The lack of a cohesive visual style has become synonymous with Ito's practice.

The use of hired hands was also notably used to produce the works shown at White Cube gallery in London[7] for his exhibition Part 2: Nora Berman, Blackwidow LA, Parker Cheeto, Carey Garris, Justin John Greene, Celia Hollander, Daniel Lane, Lee Marshall and Orion Martin: Maid in Heaven / En Plein Air in Hell (My Beautiful Dark and Twisted Cheeto Problem), 2014.[8] In this show, all of his assistants received credit as artists within the exhibition, leading people to believe it was a group exhibition.[9]

Conceptual Concerns

Ito has said that he is not concerned about maintaining ownership over ideas or stylistic decisions in a period where information sharing is ubiquitous.[2] He is a champion of the Internet and believes that the spreading of ideas is the primary purpose of its existence.[2]

Critic Reception

While Ito has received some positive reception – Chris Kraus called a 2015 exhibition "a stunning, vertiginous private museum multiplied hundreds of times"[9] – other critics have been less positive. ArtReview described a 2014 exhibition as "immensely boring... so much celebrated meaninglessness."[10]

Career

Parker Ito is represented by Château Shatto, a Los Angeles-based art gallery co-owned by Nelson Harmon and Liv Barrett, Ito's relationship partner and dealer, and Team Gallery in New York.[7][11] Ito has exhibited internationally, including at The Headquarters, Zurich; Stadium, New York; IMO Gallery, Copenhagen; New Galerie, Paris; White Cube, London, and Château Shatto, Los Angeles. In addition to his extensive use of assistants, Ito has collaborated with other artists, such as Body by Body (Melissa Sachs, Cameron Soren), Chris Coy, Caitlin Denny, Jon Rafman, Tabor Robak, Micah Schippa, John Transue, and Artie Vierkant.

Art Market

Parker Ito was one of 30 or so emerging artists that are associated with Stefan Simchowitz.[6] Simchowitz met Ito in 2009, alongside Jon Rafman and Artie Vierkant, saying “In all of these guys, I identified the makings of a movement.”[12] Simchowitz claims he was Ito's first client, purchasing a painting from him when the artist was 22 for $750, and flipping it for $1500.[6]

Ito's work experienced a rapid increase in value, peaking in February 2014 at $93,594, significantly higher than the high estimate of $25,000.[6] In July 2014 a work sold for $80,000, but in the year after that, his auction results averaged $30,000 per or had works unsold.[13] More recently, his works at auction have mostly had high estimates around or under $10,000, and have gone as low as 2,700 GBP, which was under the low estimate of 4,000 GBP.[14][15]

During the period leading up to his 2014 auction high, Ito's relationship with Simchowitz became an art-world controversy.[16] Currently, Ito is actively distancing himself from Simchowitz[17]

References

  1. ^ "Away From Keyboard: Parker Ito by Antonia Marsh". BOMB Magazine.
  2. ^ a b c d "If This is Parker Ito, Then Who is Parker Cheeto?". Bullett Media.
  3. ^ a b "25 Artists to Watch in 2014". Complex.
  4. ^ "Parker Ito Interview". Hunted Projects.
  5. ^ "Parker Ito". Interview Magazine.
  6. ^ a b c d "Stefan Simchowitz vs. the Art World". Observer.
  7. ^ a b c d e "An Artist Whose Signature Style Is a Lack of One". T Magazine, New York Times.
  8. ^ "Breaking The Code". Magenta Foundation.
  9. ^ a b "Parker Ito, As Told to Kris Kraus". Artforum.
  10. ^ "Maid in Heaven / En Plein Air in Hell (My Beautiful Dark and Twisted Cheeto Problem, reviewed by Oliver Basciano)". ArtReview.
  11. ^ http://famedriver.com, Fame Driver. "Team Gallery, José Freire". teamgal.com. Retrieved 2017-07-27. {{cite web}}: External link in |last= (help)
  12. ^ "Cultural Entrepreneur Stefan Simchowitz on the Merits of Flipping, and Being a "Great Collector"". Artspace.
  13. ^ "The Art World's Patron Satan". The New York Times Magazine.
  14. ^ "Parker Ito - 12 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy". www.artsy.net. Retrieved 2017-10-22.
  15. ^ "Parker Ito (B. 1986) , Inkjet Painting #9 (8 Colour Ink, Variation)". Retrieved 2017-10-22.
  16. ^ Greenberger, Alex (04/05/17). "Parker Ito Is Now Represented by Team Gallery". Retrieved 22 October 2017. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  17. ^ "Why Art Gallery Owners Love to Hate Stefan Simchowitz". Los Angeles Magazine.
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