STADIUM is pleased to announce, The Agony and the Ecstasy, a solo exhibition of new works by Parker Ito.

Today we live in a hybrid reality where the space between the physical and the virtual is fluid. Gone is the radical internet of the 90’s where logging off was an option. Though integrated into our daily lives, the web of today is fluid but not seamless. As the internet becomes more ubiquitous we find ourselves in purgatory between reality mediated through the screen and reality manifested in three dimensions.

Here we recognize the agony and the ecstasy of life between web 2.1 and 2.9—the anticipatory potential of life untethered from our physical selves coupled with a tormenting sense of incomplete intimacy. Through this clouded connectedness we now view and experience art. Be it online or in person, the experience of the same work of art unaffected in the gallery and viewed in the virtual realm cannot ever be the same. In a world where the vast majority of art is viewed through documentation, Parker Ito asks, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to photograph it with their Iphone while simultaneously uploading it to Tumblr, Facebook, Flickr, Google Reader, Instagram, Twitter, and Delicious does the tree really exist?”

The Agony and the Ecstasy recognizes the disparity between viewership mediated through a screen and that which occurs in the confines of a gallery. Parker Ito’s presentation of paintings and sculptures resist traditional documentation in exchange for entirely new versions once photographed. In documentation the paintings and sculptures (made of 3M Scotchlite) turn into indistinguishable flashes of light, obscuring the subtle details of each painted surface. The resulting images point to a future beyond their physical display, highlighting the inevitable multiplicity of their digital life as well as their existence as an entirely different vantage point from which to view the work. Accordingly, the experience of seeing The Agony and the Ecstasy from only one perspective is both unique and incomplete.

Parker Ito graduated from California College of the Arts in 2010 with a bachelor of fine arts and currently lives in Los Angeles. Recent exhibitions include Vice Versa with at Tomorrow in Toronto, Ontario and Wet Paint 4 at Steve Turner, Los Angeles. Last July Ito curated New Jpegs at Johan Berggren in Malmo, Sweden. This coming December Ito will be participating in the inaugural Untitled art fair in Miami.