Giorgiko

Giorgiko (pronounced jee-OR-jee-koh) is the moniker of husband-and-wife artists Darren and Trisha Inouye. Giorgiko’s work deals with the affective dimension of the human experience through their childlike characters and mysterious dogs who represent the innocence and carnality of the human spirit and soul.

Giorgiko’s work combines the simple sweetness of Trisha’s characters with Darren’s street influence, classical painting techniques, and playfully anachronistic elements, allowing their characters to transcend space and time. Through the harmonious blending of classical and contemporary in their paintings and drawings, Giorgiko explores recurring themes of feeling displaced, discovering empathy, holding onto hope, and retaining innocence. Characters in urban clothing seem stranded in the wilderness, while characters with historical attire loiter in apocalyptic urban landscapes. Long-forgotten space dogs dream of home, and so do pink-haired girls. Through moody landscapes and childlike characters, Giorgiko hopes to create a universe paralleling our own that opens a window into seeing ourselves and others sincerely and truthfully in all of our flaws and beauty.

The name Giorgiko started as a mashup of their middle names George and Songyi: "We thought the name Georgie fit our collaborative style well, and sounded a little cuter than our other options: Darisha or Trisharren, haha. As we explored the name further, we found that “Giorgi” comes from the Greek word meaning “farmer” or “earth-worker”, and “-ko” is the Japanese suffix that means “child”. We feel that the resulting meaning of “earth-working child” represents our work very well, as we depict very human emotions and experiences through a childlike lens."

Darren and Trisha first met during orientation at their alma mater ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California. Trisha hails from a Korean immigrant family in the San Francisco Bay area and was always drawing instead of doing homework. Meanwhile, Darren is a 4th generation Japanese-American from Los Angeles who fell in love with street art in his youth. They sat next to each other in Design 1, and the rest is history. The creative duo resides in the greater Los Angeles area with their twin children.

Giorgiko has exhibited their work in North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Australia.