2017 Catalogue Archive

Early in his career, Parker Ito rebelled against the traditional gallery system and challenged preconceptions of authorship by using pseudonyms and mass-producing artwork with the help of a team of studio assistants. From a recent body of work, Western Exterminators takes its imagery and color palette from a well-known billboard sculpture for the company of the same name, which features a cartoon man in a suit and top hat scolding a mouse while hiding a mallet behind his back. These memorable elements are reconfigured into a tangle of shapes reminiscent of machine imagery. This character has been included in several of the artist’s paintings and sculptures, piled in the corner of galleries or hanging from chains and neon lights.