Ian Inoy considers the beginning of his serious foray into the world of art to be 2019. It was, as he explains to me, when he first got into the art scene—although he had joined a group exhibit in 2014, out of mere curiosity. It was not a coincidence, perhaps, that the first time I featured Ian was also in 2019.
Now, nearly five years later, he has his first solo exhibit with a gallery. Dubbed “No Room for Sadness,” Ian’s first one-man show ever, and his first with Art Underground, can be considered his relaunch into the art world. I say relaunch because the pieces featured in this exhibit are very different from the first artworks he has made.
“I rediscovered myself,” Ian says, while we were chatting in the red room where his artworks hung in a hauntingly playful manner. “These pieces really are different from what my art used to look like, and I think they capture what I want my art to be moving forward.”
In a certain sense, the transformation from his previous style, which was more surreal, was Ianʼs way of defining himself as an artist after a period of uncertainty during the pandemic. Like many artists, he did not stop to create art during the Covid years. And like for many other artists, those years were not easy.
The result, which took Ian seven months to complete, was a mix of his pop surrealist style with a more playful tone.
“The artworks now are easy on the eyes because of their cute and lovable subjects so that people will not be afraid to have intimate conversations with them,” Ian explains.
“These characters, however, would then show a deeper meaning and concept behind when people start to inspect tiny elements on the paintings, like what the subjects are holding or what clothes they are wearing or even the way they smile or smirk.”
Indeed, with “No Room for Sadness,” Ian invites audiences to recall childhood memories—when life was simpler, happier—and he uses almost unnoticeable elements in each painting to do this.
At a glance, the characters invoke mixed emotions, with their large, beady eyes and oversized, Funko-esque heads. On their hands, upon closer inspection, are toys familiar to everyone of us.
With this, Ian encourages his audiences to participate in the art by looking inward, as if allowing those huge eyes looking back at them to pierce their souls and to bring back memories of their much younger selves, where there was no room for sadness.
Ian Inoyʼs first solo exhibit, “No Room for Sadness,” is on view at Art Underground until Oct. 21.