Alex Ito at Springsteen

Artist: Alex Ito

Exhibition title: Act II: Carcass and the White Light

Venue: Springsteen, Baltimore, US

Date: October 15 – December 3, 2016

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Springsteen, Baltimore

[The Carcass, 2006]

I had never seen a body like that before, sleeping in the pool of his iron
A posture so unnatural one would mistake it for theater

All of this over false necessity? Mined by iron; spilling iron

The end was met from a machine of iron.
Mined by lust; made by men.

[White Light, 1945]

When I learned of her past, I saved up the courage to ask her about that day.

“What was it like?” I asked.

The brightest light you can imagine; a light so profound it could have been God. I woke up amongst the ash of everything.

Springsteen is pleased to present Act II: Carcass and The White Light, a solo exhibition by Alex Ito.

Act II: Carcass and the White Light expands Ito’s ongoing investigation of the violence and intimacy embedded within popular visual culture and the historical narrative of progress within consumer culture. By employing the strategies of industrial image making, Ito’s work investigates how emotion is appropriated from the public and transformed into commodity; creating an economic circuit of dehumanization. Act II: Carcass and the White Light reveals a parasitic space that hides in plain sight within the landscape of everyday life.

For the exhibition, Ito presents a new body of painting depicting rapatronic images of nuclear explosions accompanied by the disjointed lettering of the word “hate”. Rapatronic imagery was developed to capture the varying stages of the atomic bomb explosions during the Trinity Test (1945). The word “HATE”, utilized as a foil to Robert Indiana’s iconic Pop image, “LOVE”, and an expansion from General Idea’s “Image Virus”, repeats itself in each canvas; displaying the desensitization and compression of violence in contemporary popular culture.

The most prominent sculpture, titled I’ve only ever known evil, is a rectilinear form with a dark figure embedded within a submerged cavity at the center of the surface. The figure is clad in the attire of a kuroko stagehand from Japanese theater that has been ceremoniously assaulted by images and objects of industry. Rising from the figure’s torso is a mechanical rotating platform that harnesses an organically grotesque and animalistic blown glass object. Appearing as if it were rising from the body, the blown glass sculpture is an interpreted hybrid of the Trinity Test photographs, bacteria and ornament; challenging the social and biological contract between products, violence and the administration of life. I’ve only ever known evil illustrates a display, a landscape and an industry inherited from the body as its developmental substrate.

Alex Ito (b. 1991, Los Angeles) lives in Brooklyn and works from Queens, NY. Select solo exhibitions AALA (Los Angeles), The Still House Group (New York), Rod Barton (London), Art in General (NY). Ito has exhibited in variety of national and international group exhibitions including Kimberly Klark (NY), Galerie Jeanroch Dard (Brussels), Franz Josefs Kai 3 (Vienna), Et Al (San Francisco), Johannes Vogt Gallery (NY), Spreeze (Munich), SADE (Los Angeles), Zabludowicz Collection (London), Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens (Belgium), Springsteen (Baltimore) and more. Forthcoming projects include a solo presentation with Springsteen at NADA Miami 2016.

Alex Ito, Hate (Trinity 1), 2016, 28.5 x 23.5 inches, Oil on canvas in aluminum frame

Alex Ito, I’ve only ever known evil, 2016, dimensions variable, Mannequin, motor, glass, resin, digital print on fabric, sand, plants, wood, aluminum, paint, vinyl

Alex Ito, I’ve only ever known evil, 2016 (detail), dimensions variable, Mannequin, motor, glass, resin, digital print on fabric, sand, plants, wood, aluminum, paint, vinyl

Alex Ito, Hate (Trinity 2), 2016, 28.5 x 23.5 inches, Oil on canvas in aluminum frame

Alex Ito, I’ve only ever known evil, 2016 (detail), dimensions variable, Mannequin, motor, glass, resin, digital print on fabric, sand, plants, wood, aluminum, paint, vinyl

Alex Ito, I’ve only ever known evil, 2016, dimensions variable, Mannequin, motor, glass, resin, digital print on fabric, sand, plants, wood, aluminum, paint, vinyl