Tat Ito

Artist Statement

I use “oil on water” as a metaphor for Japanese contemporary art and culture upon which the Western viewpoint is floating. This cultural experience is a symptom of the Japanese obedience to the Western cultural and artistic paragon. Like a skim of oil on water, its beautiful reflecting surface fascinates the viewers. But it never got mixed with substance underneath.

I conceptualize my visual metaphor of a floating liquid ever-changing milieu of culture idea by making painting references Japanese tradition and its conventions in a new hybridized form of the East meets the West. By using oil paint, the medium of the West, I further complicate the mix. I push the decorative aspect of art so that the semantics are less obvious. By doing so, I attempt to counter-emphasizing the semantics of my painting to make the context mysterious, and arousing audiences’ inquisitiveness. “In-between” disambiguates an anxiety of being in a world of two unmixable substances. (bio)

Tat Ito at Joshua Liner Gallery

Tat Ito on Saatchi Online