Greg Ito: To Give and Take

Greg Ito: To Give and Take

To Give and Take is a new solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based, Bay Area–trained artist Greg Ito that explores cycles of sacrifice, inheritance, and renewal through personal narrative and collective memory. Drawing inspiration from The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein, Ito traces how the story’s meaning shifts over time: from a childhood story of generosity into a meditation on the emotional and physical exchanges that shape generations. Driven by his own recent experience of becoming a father, Ito creates work dedicated to the future, exploring what we leave behind for the next generation.

The exhibition features new paintings, sculptures, and a video installation alongside previous works, rendered in Ito’s signature graphic style. Using flat exterior house paint with meticulous precision, he builds layered, surreal scenes that move between domestic interiors and shifting environmental landscapes where time feels compressed and overlapping. Within these environments, carefully constructed paintings function as symbolic windows, inviting us to consider our relationship to climate change, resilience, and what we carry. 

Central to the work are key moments drawn from The Giving Tree: the tree offering its apples, branches, and trunk to support the boy through different stages of life, only to be reduced to a stump in old age. In the story’s final moment, the boy, now an old man, returns seeking rest, and the remaining stump offers itself one last time as a place to sit. For Ito, this conclusion embodies both the beauty and brutality of generational sacrifice, the quiet reality that each generation gives parts of itself so the next may continue forward.

The exhibition moves through stages of growth, harvest, depletion, and renewal. Trees recur as metaphors for ancestry, shelter, labor, and survival. Branches extend and fracture, structures erode and rebuild, and figures move through moments of tenderness, absence, and transformation. These symbolic gestures reflect not only personal family dynamics, but also collective histories shaped by resilience and endurance. 

Underlying the work is a reflection on Japanese American incarceration during World War II and the sacrifices endured by prior ancestors who were forced to rebuild lives, identities, and homes under impossible circumstances. That history becomes a framework for considering how the struggles, labor, and care of those who came before us become embedded within the foundations of our everyday lives.

To Give and Take asks: What do we take from the world, and what do we give back in return? What does life offer us, and what does it ask us to surrender? The exhibition invites viewers to reflect on how they participate in the world today, what values they pass on, the burdens they carry, and what they choose to nourish for future generations. It considers what remains after time strips things down to their essence, serving as a reminder that the future is shaped by what we choose to plant, sustain, and care for in the present.

Support:

Curated by Zoë Latzer, Curator and Director of Public Programs. To Give and Take at the ICA San José is made possible thanks to sponsorship support from Karen Klier and James Leventhal, Fiona Wang, and Orange Barrel Media. Programs and exhibitions at the ICA are made possible with thanks to generous support from the City of San José’s Office of Cultural Affairs, the Knight Foundation, the Lipman Family Foundation, and Yvonne and Mike Nevens; along with support from SVCreates. In-kind support has been provided by Benjamin Moore paints.

About Greg Ito:

Greg Ito (b. 1987), lives and works in Los Angeles. Ito is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, sculpture, installation, and time-based media. Through these interconnected mediums, he constructs symbolic environments that merge personal narrative with broader cultural histories. His work often draws from his Japanese American family history, using storytelling rooted in this history as a point of entry to reflect on memory, resilience, and the shared complexities of our human condition.

Ito’s work has been presented at institutions including the Frye Art Museum (Seattle), the Cantor Arts Center (Stanford), K11 Musea (Hong Kong), the Long Beach Museum of Art (Long Beach), the Institute of Contemporary Art San Diego (San Diego), and Rockefeller Center (New York) with Art Production Fund. His work is included in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami (Miami), the Crocker Art Museum (Sacramento), the K11 Art Foundation (Hong Kong), East West Bank, Progressive Art Collection, and Cedars-Sinai, among others.

Hero Image:
The Giving Tree, 2023
Acrylic on canvas over panel
84” x 72″