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“Rob Sato’s art lives in a thrilling zone where seductive, colorful, surreal landscapes invite exploration but paradoxically hint at ominous bad trips lurking over the horizon. Sato’s paintings conjure Willy Wonka’s edible candy garden where the fine line between delicious and deadly is crucial to the mystery and adventure.”
– Subliminal Projects founder Shepard Fairey
Subliminal Projects is pleased to present Earthquake Country, a solo exhibition by Echo Park-based artist Rob Sato, featuring a new body of drawings, paintings, and collaborative textile works. Rooted in his daily drawing and dream documentation practice, Sato explores the tension between the chaotic forces that shape our existence and the need for rest and restoration. With a layered interplay of humor, horror, and beauty, the exhibition is both a personal reflection and a broader meditation on the literal and metaphorical tremors that define contemporary life.
Set against the backdrop of his career in illustration and animation, and rocked by tectonic cultural shifts as seen through the window of Echo Park, Los Angeles, his home and creative base for nearly two decades, Earthquake Country is a homecoming for Sato. “Drawing is my main source of play and my main tool for seeing and thinking,” the artist reflects, “This body of work is marked by a period of trying to commune with the world I encounter every day, and to make art more intuitively than ever.” Blending figuration, abstraction, and experimentation, Sato excavates the paradoxes of sleep through dreamy, fragmented compositions that fluctuate between the coexistence of life’s volatile cycles and languor.
Underscoring the importance of grounding in community and place, the exhibition also highlights Sato’s collaborations with local artists, includ- ing Subliminal Projects alumni Ako Castuera, multidisciplinary artist Rosie Brand, and natural dye expert Graham Keegan, whose contributions translate Sato’s drawings and paintings into textiles. The interdisciplinary works presented in Earthquake Country are both a reckoning and a release- an invitation to rest, reflect, and reimagine as we shift within spiritual, physical, and cultural unrest.
ABOUT ROB SATO
Rob Sato is a Los Angeles-based artist and illustrator from Sacramento, CA. He holds a B.F.A. from the California College of Arts & Crafts and creates work that blends intricate detail with surreal storytelling. His art has been exhibited internationally, including at the Japanese American National Museum and the Oakland Museum of California. Sato also works in animation, designing for shows like The Midnight Gospel and Beavis and Butt-Head, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Juxtapoz.
For more information visit robsato.com, and follow him on Instagram @robsato.
ABOUT SUBLIMINAL PROJECTS
Subliminal Projects is a multi-functional project space and gallery established by Shepard Fairey and Blaize Blouin in 1995 as a way to introduce skateboard culture and design to the art world. The concept grew and found roots later in Los Angeles, at a time when many artists found them- selves shut out by the “art scene.” Subliminal Projects emerged as a gallery that championed emerging and marginalized artists, built out of cultural importance to serve as a center for the community to openly express and spark dialogue about art, music, and activism. Now located in the historic neighborhood of Echo Park, Subliminal Projects continues to offer a platform for artistic exploration and innovation.
For more information visit subliminalprojects.com, and follow us on Instagram @subliminalprojects.
