The Inland Empire is Jeff Soto’s inaugural London exhibition which opened at Stolen Space. It's a politically-charged show focusing on the theme of recession in the area in which he lives and how it reflects what is happening all over the world in which the 33-year-old Los Angeles artist creates fantastical and hectic environments for his twisted Dystopian characters, with glints of humour and inspiration. Over the few days he was in London, Jeff Soto also painted a series of large-scale pieces around Brick Lane, which is where Dazed Digital bumped into him, mere hours before the opening of his awesome exhibition. 

Dazed Digital: How’s London been treating you?
Jeff Soto: It’s been treating me great. All the people at the gallery and all you people interviewing me have been super cool. I haven’t paid for a single meal since I got here.

DD: That’s British hospitality for you.
Jeff Soto: Yeah! Even all the neighbourhood guys, when I’ve been painting around Brick Lane, they’ve all been really nice.

DD: This is your first London show, what took u so long?
Jeff Soto: I was alternating between New York and Los Angeles for a long tim. Every nine or ten months I was doing shows at one of those places and felt I just needed to get out more in the world. I’ve been working with the Jonathan Levine Gallery in New York a lot and he’s a friend of D*Face, he’s a fan of my work and vice versa.

DD: Can you explain more about the exhibition?
Jeff Soto: The show is called The Inland Empire, that’s the region I live in, about an hour east of Los Angeles. It’s kind of a weird place.

DD: Is it like the David Lynch film?
Jeff Soto: I haven’t seen that film yet. It’s quite a contradictory place. There’s a lot of poor areas and it’s quite conservative but there’s a lot of gangs, a lot of drugs, there’s not very much going on with art there… sometimes I question why I live there.

DD: Your work is like a Dystopian Bizarro World, with the beauty and destruction, the robots and cheeky, broken greenery.
Jeff Soto: I like to have fun with my paintings but I have a real serious side too. I’m one of those guys who sometimes can’t get to sleep at night because I’m thinking about problems that the world has that I can’t do anything about. But I’m a happy guy, so I want to keep life fun. I’m thinking a lot about the recession and how bad it’s hitting my home town and affecting the whole world. The show is about the bad times and the good times with weird shit thrown in – my brain unloading and painting whatever comes out… craziness.

DD: How do you feel the doom and gloom affects creativity?
Jeff Soto: I think hard times can make the arts flourish. The last recession I was in high school in the 90s and I got really heavily into graffiti. My parents were out of work and the idea that you can be having a fucked up life, but you can be creating this beautiful art – we really embraced that.

DD: Who else inspired you?
Jeff Soto: When I left high school, that was when I started learning about contemporary art, the Mexican muralists, I opened up to everything. Printmaking, photography, film… I experimented with all of it. I made the cool art films. Actually, they weren’t cool.

DD: New Image Art has just celebrated its 15th Year Anniversary. I wanted to talk about the importance of the gallery in LA?
Jeff Soto: Marsea (Goldberg) of New Image Art gave me my first ever show, back in 2001. I’m always indebted to her for helping me out with my start. She shows some really cool artists and she has a really good head on her. She’s very important to LA. There are a lot of other galleries showing really young artists and they’re trying to make them develop a certain style too early. I’d rather see these artists evolve.

DD: Last thoughts of London before the big show opening this evening?
Jeff Soto: Everyone’s saying there’s going to be a lot of people tonight. Dude, why you got to stress me out?! I really admire what’s going on over here. There’s a real community here. Conor Harrington, D*Face, Chloe Early, Word to Mother, they’re all really tight and I’m a fan of all those guys I just mentioned, and a bunch I’m forgetting. That’s the reason I wanted to do a show in London.    

Jeff Soto’s The Inland Empire is showing at Stolen Space gallery until June 7.