IN CONVERSATION WITH is a series from Archetype where we interview artists in/at the edges of crypto across music, visual art, design, curation, and more.

Parker Ito is a Yonsei/Gosei Japanese American artist, à la mode, living in San Francisco and working in Los Angeles associated with post-internet or zombie formalism, depending on who you ask. In the years gone by he has exhibited his oeuvre in galleries, museums, and coffee shops on four continents and will continue to exhibit his work in the future (hopefully).

The following interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Katie Chiou: For those who may not be familiar with your work, can you share more about your background/journey as an artist? 

Parker Ito: I grew up skateboarding. My friends and I would make skate videos, so I learned how to edit videos and use Photoshop to make flyers, posters, patches, and things like that. I'd always been creative and liked art, but didn't really recognize these things as art. When I was 18, I read a book on Jean-Michel Basquiat that made me want to actually become a professional artist. Since that point, I’ve dedicated my life to art. I went to college in the Bay Area and got an undergraduate degree in art, and even though at that time I felt very ignored by my college/local art scene, I became very involved in an international online art scene and this would become a very formative time in my life.

It was right as web2 was beginning to transition, and I was part of this sort of first wave of millennial artists on the internet—using the internet as a kind of medium but also working in traditional, object-based artworks, and relying heavily on documentation to communicate these objects. Being part of this scene was one of the most exciting times of my life. That whole scene later turned into what has been historicized and labeled as “post-internet.” 

A lot of friends I met during that time have gone on to be successful contemporary artists, but post-internet didn’t start in the mainstream art world, it was a movement happening online with a specific group of people. Then, post-internet started transitioning into the art world and happened parallel to another movement called “zombie formalism” that people associate me with. 

I always say I make painting, sculpture, and video, but I'm actually more of an installation artist. Zooming out even more, I'm someone who just wants to make JPEGs—or now PNGs, since that’s the format most of my NFTs are in. I work in every medium in a way.

KC: You’ve talked about post-internet as early as 2011. How do you conceptualize post-internet and how has it evolved over time? 

PI: My go-to answer to this is always to define post-internet in three different ways.

The first would be post-internet within the art market, which is a designated moment in time—a transition of internet art into the mainstream art world. There's a certain aesthetic and certain artists associated with the movement, and it operates as a way to spread things through a market. But there's also a curatorial agenda behind it. I think that, within the art world, post-internet was the last true movement in that it was a group of people who organically came together with a shared belief system and semi shared goals.

All the movements since then in the art world have been market-driven. Post-internet also eventually became market-driven, but it started as a scene of people, whereas other movements since then have been largely random artists tied together through some sort of aesthetic sensibility—zombie formalism looks very much like that. So, that's one definition: a moment in time, a movement within the contemporary art world.

The second definition would be the actual scene that was post-internet. I usually refer to this as “net art,” a really specific time period—from like 2009 to 2013 was my involvement. But there were also different generations in net art. There was a period from 2006 to 2009 before me, which is generally referred to as the “surf club” era—things like Nasty Nets, Double Happiness, and Spirit Surfers.

I define the era I was part of as the “Tumblr” era. I think the biggest difference is that the Tumblr era was made up of people coming from a more traditional point of view in terms of art production—people who made objects, people who wanted to be in the contemporary art world—versus the earlier wave of net art. A lot of that earlier wave was people who were less art world aspirational, less gallery focused. 

The third definition, which I actually believe is the true definition of post-internet, is just the world after the advent of the internet. The internet has shaped everything so radically. It's hard to think of an invention in human history that has been more impactful, maybe the invention of written language would be on par. In that sense, I feel like every artist now is a post-internet artist because they have to deal with the realities of living in this networked society.

KC: Why do you think movements haven’t persisted structurally since post-internet? Does internet sprawl contribute to that or is it for some other reason?

PI: In an art historical context, I think there is a dissolution of movements and the dissolution of a contemporary avant-garde when you start to enter Postmodernism. If you think about the amount of movements within Modernism, they were so rapid and stacked into each other. 

As we progress to the end of the late 20th century, the Pictures Generation did feel like an avant-garde movement and then Neo-expressionism feels like the end of that. Post-80s—there’s definitely stuff I’m missing—Young British Artists (YBA), was mostly geographically designated, and there was not really a coherent message or goal within the works. And so, it becomes this trend where there's fewer and fewer movements.

Beyond these historical art circles, I think my generation of net art artists was really excited about the possibilities of the internet and using it to connect with each other. And as the internet became more accepted by the art world, the art world started using the internet as a tool and maximized its worst features.

There's certain kinds of artworks now, paintings specifically, that are really dominant in the market because they’re very easy to post online—like on Instagram. People see them and immediately understand what they are, they’re legible. That dynamic shifted to drive a very particular type of market. Because the contemporary art world always exists in a market context, there's a motivation to use new tools to accrue capital and to extract as much value as possible. 

KC: I think a counterpoint I hear often is that the art world has largely always been undergirded by rich patrons. Is the difference now how explicit the dynamic is or has something else fundamentally changed?

PI: You have to remember that for many years, the art world was really small. It’s always been gatekept and controlled by a small group of people. But now it’s expanded a lot; there’s more galleries and artists than ever.

For a long time there was the idea of patronage. There was a sort of moral obligation that the wealthy felt to support the arts. It’s corny, but I think people really believed in supporting the imagining of a better world. It doesn’t feel like that now. There was this sort of corporatization in the 1980s where finance entered art, in my mind it ties back to Jeffrey Deitch. Art starts to change and also becomes an asset or an investment, something to store money in.

Another inflection point worth mentioning is that art/the art world is not the center of culture anymore, like it was for so long. The internet, and its collection of random creators, is now the center of culture; but the art world hasn’t acknowledged this at all. The art world is grasping at this attempt to maintain its status as a cultural force, but it’s not been very successful.

There’s also a generational component. The collecting class seems like it’s dying, and younger generations have a different relationship to these objects and having “art collections,” in the traditional sense.

KC: In your own practice, you often use varying tools—assistants, manufacturers in China, etc.. How do you think about the relationship between ideation and production and the tools you use in the process?

PI: I've always believed in a fluidity between all of these different spaces and mediums and forms. That’s a central idea within my work. There are recurring characters, but they often shift forms. As an example, I hacked the scanners in my studio that I had used for years and made them into sculptures. That was kind of a really important object for me to think about—that sort of data transference between different modes that we operate in.

For me, all of these things are symbiotic and kind of flowing out of each other. I think about an idea and then think about the best medium to express that idea.

One of the things that’s been really rewarding about making NFTs is that it’s a very pure form for me. I’ve always started projects in Photoshop, but the end product—especially when I used to work with a lot of assistants—would usually look really different. I’d make collages in Photoshop, but then we’d turn them into large paintings. I think it’s like that for a lot of artists. The original thing they sketch up is not what it turns out to be. But no one ever saw those original Photoshop collages. No one ever saw the work in progress. With NFTs, I basically do it all in Photoshop—the rawest form of expression for me. 

I was very influenced by big production artists when I was in college. Jeff Koons would be someone who I was looking at a lot. I realized that it’s cool to make large scale stuff, and I also realized that there was stuff beyond the kind of scope of my own abilities that I wanted to make. Working with assistants was completely freeing because I could paint in any style. I could make any form. I have always been a kind of ideas person, and that’s what I’m probably focused on more than anything. Everything else is just a way to realize my idea as best as possible.

KC: I’d love to turn more toward your experience with NFTs, crypto, and Solana especially.

PI: NFTs are something I’m really excited about right now. There’s this whole scene on Solana that’s been called a few different names—avant NFT, gay NFT. It reminds me a lot of a continuation of net art in a way, a group of people who come together organically and form a real scene. I think it’s the forefront of art right now, a true avant-garde. 

Collecting contemporary art is so expensive, and even within the collector class there are tiers of what people can afford. I like that I can just make an NFT and sell it for $10 to a person I’ve never met before, over the internet, and there can be thousands of people who own my art. It’s very different from selling a discrete art object, only the 1% can afford. Both systems have functions, and are each important to my art.

I know there’s a whole speculative side of NFTs, but I’ve experienced very little of that in the avant NFT scene. People want to be there and support you. I feel a lot more supported in the NFT space than I ever have felt in the art world, except maybe within the net art scene. It’s been really refreshing, and it’s revitalized my excitement in art in a way I haven’t experienced in a while.

KC: For the folks who want to be more a part of the scene you’re describing, what artists or collections on Solana would you point them towards?

PI: It’s all happening in real-time on Twitter, so it’s hard to be able to communicate what the scene actually is. The most important collection for me within this space is called Drifella 2, created by someone called Evil Biscuit. That collection kind of defined the aesthetic that’s become really associated with the scene—traitmaxxing. Also, all these collections originally came out of their relationship with PFP (profile picture) collections and using tools like Hashlips as a compiler system for creating all these images. In response to the traditional PFP NFT format, artists started taking these tools and creating these super maximalist compositions. 

To frame it in an art historical context, it does feel like this new Dada-esque moment. There was a specific, formal aesthetic associated with NFTs and PFP culture that became kind of mainstream, but it’s been reabsorbed and reimagined into an entirely new aesthetic.

Another project I saw when I entered the space was Horses? by Tojiba Brand Manager. Horses? was made by one artist but they belong to a collective called Tojiba that has made several very good projects. Little Swag World by supermetal bosch is really interesting, using AI and 3D rendering. I could keep going.

KC: And are all these people in conversation together? How do you keep a scene alive?

PI: There’s a gallery in New York called Yeche Lange that feels like the center of the scene right now. It was started by several people, one of them being Jared Madere that I think you interviewed previously?

KC: Yeah.

PI: They’re some of the people at the center I would say. I’m totally new to the scene, but I think there are definitely older and newer groups. There are periodic Twitter Spaces from Snoot Brut, which is the critical wing of Yeche Lange run by Fairybaby and Lowbie. Everyone hangs out, people of all ages from all over the world. I met up with people from the scene during my last trip to New York. It all feels like 2011 to me, the excitement of being a fan of someone online and then hanging out with them.

KC: Can you talk a little more about the traitmaxxing aesthetic you mentioned earlier? What does traitmaxxing mean to you or to the scene?

PI: I was once hanging out with my friend Travess Smalley who operates in a very different NFT scene, it’s the ETH fine art scene. I mentioned to him that I was thinking about spending time with NFTs, and he said something like “Yeah you should, NFTs look like the work you were making in 2013-2014.” I had no idea what he was talking about because I had a very limited understanding of NFTs at the time.

But then my friend Dean Kissick, who really introduced me to the space, showed me Drifella 2 via his Twitter feed. It started this cross-generation net art and NFT dialogue for me where it felt like there was a very similar aesthetic sensibility. I think the traitmaxxed aesthetic comes from having access to a new tool to make images. Hashlips became the default tool for making an NFT collection, and eventually artists started to try and push the tool to its limits. 

Now, there’s a lot of people in the space kind of done with traitmaxxing, they’re ready for the next thing. The recent series of NFTs I made are made by hand, I tried to not traitmaxx them at all. 

KC: You did a project recently with Zien called Parkerito.net where every NFT in the 10,000 piece collection was redeemable for a physical painting. Do you think digital art needs to have a physical companion? 

PI: For that project, I just wanted people to take NFTs seriously. It was my first NFT project so I wanted it to be ambitious. It’s lame though to attach a digital object to a physical thing just to make people take it seriously.

I made this poster in 2013 that has this dumb quote on it that people always bring up. It’s something like, “I heard when Picasso died, he had made 250,000 works in his lifetime, and I could make that many JPEGs in five minutes.” It’s originally a Warhol quote that I had changed, but it is kind of the original ethos of NFTs in a way.

I felt like that was a moment to try to tie everything back into that original premise and say that I actually was going to try to make 10,000 unique and good paintings. I found it quite challenging, but I was also excited to try.

The more time I spend in this NFT space, the more I think these are some of the first successful artworks to fully address the cultural and creative force of the internet in a truly authentic way. I think the art of post-internet showed us what art looks like in a network, it pointed to the internet and said “look you have to consider this context” but in that process created this unholy matrimony between the art world and the internet. A lot of the art that’s existed in these white cube spaces feels larp-y. Artists are mimicking the phenomenon of internet space in a gallery context.

But galleries are boring, really dead spaces. The internet is this living thing that is constantly mutating. I feel like NFTs can actually embody this ethos, instead of just mimicking it, both in their form and in their dissemination. NFTs are, in a way, the first time we have a true memetic art. So, instead of trying to paint memes or something, artists should just make NFTs and people should learn how to value that.

I really appreciate the work that folks like Yeche Lange are trying to do to make that crossover.

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