Artists planning a big gallery show often try to surprise visitors with work that feels fresh or unfamiliar. The Los Angeles artist-provocateur Parker Ito has taken things one step further: he managed to keep his gallerists at Chateau Shatto in the dark, not letting them see the work in progress in his studio for nearly a year and banishing them from the show’s installation.
Ito has clearly enjoyed building the suspense. A letter he wrote in lieu of a press release reads: “Dear chateau shatto, i am having an art show. thank you! or is it art shows? something will happen in your gallery between the dates of sept 1-nov 6, 2016… it has been hard to keep what i am doing hidden from you, but soon you will find out.”
The artist did not even give his wife, Liv Barrett, who is one of the gallery’s owners, a sneak peek. “I think she’s really been enjoying this,” Ito told us on Wednesday, the day before the show opened to the public and the gallery staff. Barrett, reached by phone opening day, described the experience of handing over the keys to the space as “suspenseful, yes, but also kind of pleasurable.” She called it a “reprieve from all of the day-to-day details of production, letting me access the exhibition in a very pure way.”
So what does the new work look like? The first reveal is a series of photo-based canvases, made using a streaky, uneven inkjet-print transfer process, showing large flowers superimposed on gritty LA city scenes. “The flowers are anxious about their own power as beautiful or decorative objects,” the artist explained. Ito also promises that the show will change substantially six times during its run. And, no, he’s not telling his gallery how.