When the artist Greg Ito—a fourth-generation Angeleno—was first approached by Frieze to create an inflatable sculpture to greet visitors just outside its Los Angeles fair, he thought a burning candle the size of a palm tree would be the perfect visual.
“It’s a symbol I use in a lot of my artwork,” he tells The Art Newspaper. “I was thinking of it as a beacon.” But after the deadly wildfires in January, a giant sculpture of fire seemed inappropriate. “So I pivoted from a candle to an alarm clock,” he says.
Greg Ito, A Time to Blossom, 2025 Eric Thayer
Ito created A Time to Blossom (2025) in collaboration with the Art Production Fund. He hopes that the huge alarm clock, with its crown of orange flowers, will unify the community and serve as a metaphor for healing, hope and transformation. (He adds that it could be a welcome distraction for stressed-out drivers looking for parking at the fair.)
The clock is set to 3:33—“I like repeating numbers, and this is the number for regeneration,” Ito says—and the blooms atop it represent his Japanese heritage and the poppies that transfigure Southern California’s landscape every year. “With time comes healing,” Ito says, “and this is a time for us to grow.”
