Interestingly enough I looked up the meaning of "Soto" today and came up with Sōtō Zen, which in essence is the least popular of the three sects of Zen Buddhism, being nicknamed "Farmer Zen" by the Japanese. Fate has a funny way of wrapping coincidences together in such a tidy package it makes me wonder if there really is some omniscient being out there, something like an old school hack, banging away at a typewriter and working out the script. The name is fitting, for Jeff Soto does engage his audience in a moment of perplexing meditation, a visual shock of the senses invariably leaving the viewer hanging in a strange and eerie space that takes some adjusting on one’s first encounter. Fuelled by a sumptuously organic iconography of a Daliesque persuasion, the perversions of the anima are left cerebrally hanging and entangled by the inner workings of a 21st Century mind.
You search for something familiar, the occasional smiling face, the pre-conscious of simple shapes, the colours of a childhood remembered at the peak of an LSD trip, you find your psychological footing, your rhythm, your centre, and you’re away. Riding on the Soto rollercoaster of insane perspective, explosive pallete, and a strangely logical dynamic you soon realise the evolution Soto has passed through from his earliest installations to his later paintings and limited edition prints. He’s a favourite both sides of the Atlantic with regular showings at D*Face‘s Stolen Space Gallery in London and various galleries in NY and California including the Jonathan Levine Gallery and the Riverside Art Museum. Soto’s internal world seems unaffected, or at least on the surface, by his growing fame. However his works have become more ambitious, his talent for mixing hyper-realist imagery with painterly and graffitiesque backgrounds continues to grow,. Whilst his persistence of being, his far-sighted focus and continual expansion on a theme of psychological and metaphorical landscape, his embrace of subverted iconography, and the plainly weird and bizarre remains unchanged.
The underlying message in much of Soto’s work connects on a primal almost primordial level, at least in regards to his visual language of emotion and instinct, fears, nostalgia, musings upon our mortality, love and lust,,and a hope for what is to come. One of the most memorable aspects of Soto’s later work is his distinct colour palette, vibrant, almost dream-like to a degree. An unnerving luminescence and vibrancy surrounds many of his central protagonists of a subconscious script that only Soto has the ability to read. What is most familiar are his inspirations, such as the toys of his childhood, the creative world of skateboarding and graffiti, as well as hip-hop and popular culture. Whilst at first impression Soto’s pieces seem accessible, there is an entrancing quality to his work that for me personally rivals that of the continuous battle for precedence between consciousness and subconsciousness.
In the summer of 2006 Soto opened his online store at PotatoStamp.com where with the help of a friend and his brother sells a a selection of limited edition prints. Such as Inland Empire which regretfully for I and many others has already sold out.
However if you have some spare cash Soto is still selling 50 limited edition giclee prints of one of his most famous pieces Nature’s Wrath. The original was shown at Stolen Space May 14th 2009 and for those who love Soto’s work this is probably a great investment.
You might be interested in Soto’s books too which are again available at Potato Stamp. I will definitely be keeping my on Soto’s work, it will be fascinating to see which direction he takes for the future.
