Intersections / Disruptions: Jennifer Gunlock, Patti Oleon, Paul Paiement & Greg Rose

LAUNCH Gallery is proud to present a summer group show organized by Greg Rose. Intersections / Disruptions is an exhibition that explores the intersection between architecture and the natural landscape, and the ways in which they can disrupt and complement each other. The four artists included in this show use a variety of strategies to depict a visual connection between things that happen naturally and things that happen by design.

Jennifer Gunlock’s mixed media collage/drawings feature landscapes occupied by tree-based forms that are fused with industrial, technological and architectural bits, creating a clash of environments, both natural and built. The images she creates give us a glimpse into what the planet’s landscapes might look like after humans have gone extinct and nature regains its dominance. Her works offer a commentary on Western civilization’s attempts to dominate and manipulate nature, but also on nature’s ability to slowly recover after Human industrial overshoot and collapse.

Paul Paiement’s mixed media paintings attempt a positive reconciliation between the natural world and the synthetic, technology-driven culture that humans have created for themselves. His painterly representational renderings of naturalistic landscapes, composed with atmospheric perspective, include the addition of airbrushed acrylic glass overlays depicting architectural structures, presented with linear perspective. This Hybridization of linear and atmospheric perspective, of representation and abstraction, and the use of a dimensional extension to the traditional 2-D painting surface, show off an idealistic desire to find a nexus between opposing forces within the medium of painting, but also an idealism regarding the future of Humanity’s ability to find a workable relationship with the natural aspects of our planet.

In her colorfully lush oil paintings, Patti Oleon creates haunting images that blend layers of interior spaces and exterior landscapes. Her depictions of hotel and apartment lobbies as seen through glass (from outside looking in) feature superimposed reflections of landscapes onto the interior spaces. The effect of this visual collision, a collision between banal waiting spaces and dramatically unstable scenes of nature, leaves the viewer slightly disoriented and ambiguous about what is in front of him or her, and what is merely an illusion.

Perhaps it’s because we spend most of our time indoors, occupying one form or another of architecture, that “Landscape” is something that we generally regard as being “outside”. In the work of Greg Rose, landscape is not something you see when you look out through a window. The organic and geometric forms in his compositions float in an undefined space, where the traditional relationship between “inside” and “outside” is de-emphasized and ambiguous. The various hard-edged lines and rectilinear forms function as elemental units that hint at an architectural space, but never really define it, and the trees, while normally would be seen as being asymmetrical, seem to be attempting an orderly dance with the geometry. Which leads us to the question… Do nature and design secretly long for one another?

Jennifer Gunlock

Based in Los Angeles, Gunlock has received an MFA at California State University, Long Beach in 2023. A 2022 recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, she has exhibited nationally and in local venues such as Sturt Haaga Gallery at Descanso Gardens, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Launch LA, and Angels Gate Cultural Center. She has been Artist in Residence at Cill Rialaig Project in Ireland; Playa in Summer Lake, Oregon; Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts in Saratoga, Wyoming; and at the Pajama Factory in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, among others. In 2014-15, Gunlock participated in “Fires of Change”, an NEA-funded collaboration between artists and scientists, to translate the social and ecological issues surrounding wildfire in the Southwest. Following a fire science bootcamp in the Grand Canyon, and a year to complete project, a group exhibition opened at Coconino Center for the Arts in Flagstaff, Arizona in September 2015 and travelled to the University of Arizona in Tucson and 516 Arts in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Paul Paiement

Paul Paiement has shown widely in solo and group shows in New York, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, London, France, Austria, Japan, China, Chicago, and the United States. Most notably the Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA; Mattatock Museum, Waterbury, Connecticut; Berkley Art Center, Berkley, CA; The Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY; de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara; Colle del Duomo Museo, Viterbo, Italy; The Centré d’Art Contemporain, Pont-Aven, France; Oxford Castle, Oxford, England; the National Academy of Art, Oslo, Norway. Recent solo exhibitions include “Una Nuova Specie” at Palazzo del Bargello, Museo della Balestra, Gubbio, Italy and the Carrousel du Louvre, The Louvre, Paris, France. Paiement’s work has been featured in numerous publications including New American Paintings, Corriere dell’ Umbria (Italy), Art in America, Artillery, ARTnews, Artscene, Modern Painters, The Los Angeles Times, Art in America, The Orange County Register, Artweek, SF Weekly, and the New Art Examiner. The Public Broadcast Service (PBS) recently featured Paiement in their award-winning Twin Cities Original series. He is represented in by Adelinda Allegretti (Rome, Italy), Tufenkian Fine Arts (Los Angeles), and Ethan Cohen Gallery (New York). His paintings are included in numerous public and private collections such as JP Morgan Chase, Brenau University, Wellington Management Company, International Arts and Artists, KB Homes (Kaufman & Broad), Lancaster Museum of Art, and Creative Artists Agency. Paiement received his BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and MFA from the University of Southern California in 1995. He currently is on the full-time faculty (painting, drawing) at Cypress College in Orange County, California.

Patti Oleon

Patti Oleon received both a BA and MFA in Fine Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles, from which she graduated Phi Kappa and Summa Cum Laude. Her work has been featured and reviewed in many publications, including ArtScene, Voyage Houston, Visual Art Source, Artsy, Artnet News, Art LTD, New American Painting (issues #157 and #67), The Boston Globe and The Los Angeles Times. Oleon has had numerous solo and group exhibitions including Edward Cella Art & Architecture, Culver City and Los Angeles, Cris Worely Fine Arts in Dallas, Texas, Modernism Inc. Gallery in San Francisco, George Lawson Gallery in Culver City and San Francisco, Mark Moore Gallery in Culver City, Carl Berg Gallery and Acme in Los Angeles, Porch Gallery in Ojai, CA,  The San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art in San Jose, CA, Bentley Gallery in Phoenix, AZ, Sears Peyton Gallery and White Columns in NYC. Oleon was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Grant and also grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (twice), The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Grant, and a Fulbright Fellowship for study in Munich, Germany and many others. She lives and works in San Francisco, California.

Greg Rose

Greg Rose received a BFA in Drawing & Painting from California State University, Long Beach in 1992 and an MFA in Drawing & Painting from Claremont Graduate University in 1997. Rose has since exhibited in several galleries and institutions including the Richard Heller Gallery and Carl Berg Gallery in Los Angeles, the Hosfelt Gallery in San Francisco and New York City, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City and the Museum of Art & History in Lancaster, California. Rose has also been included in a variety of group shows in Southern California galleries including Miller Durazo Gallery, Domestic Setting, Acme, PØST, PRJCTLA, Pedersen Projects, Launch LA Gallery, the Pierce College Art Gallery and the Irvine Fine Arts Center. Rose’s work has been featured in numerous publications including New American Paintings, ARTnews, Artweek, Artforum, Artillery Magazine, Art Issues, LA Weekly, The Los Angeles Times and The San Francisco Chronicle. His Work is included in various collections, including Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP (Los Angeles), Creative Artists Agency (Beverly Hills), Wellington Management Company LLC (Boston), “W” Hotel (Washington, D.C.), and The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. He Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.