Art

Laura Rokas is a painter, ceramicist, and textile artist. Rokas’s practice embodies a spirit of dedicated amateurism characteristic of a generation that grew up figuring out how to make creative use of new technologies, the materials of the internet, and digital communication. Rokas’s approach is generally to produce something new by testing out very basic methods with whatever materials she’s drawn to. Both Rokas’s mother and sister are quilters, and she learned by watching them, listening to their stories, and asking questions. Rokas’s work incorporates her lived experience and remixes it with visual references, symbols, and themes drawn from pop culture, literature, and science fiction. In particular, she likes to rework familiar symbols because of their psychological power. The potency of her work comes from her ability to exploit and recontextualize familiar pop culture iconography in ways that unravel seemingly simple imagery. Rokas’s interpretations gravitate toward the uncanny, dealing with alternate realities, twins, doubles, and doppelgangers—the realm of “what if,” “what could have been,” and the just plain weird. And since Rokas never offers a Rosetta Stone to decode the work, the viewer is often left with more questions than answers, and that’s just fine with her. Laura Rokas (b. 1989, St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Canada) lives and works in San Francisco, CA. She received her BFA at Concordia University, Montréal in 2013 and her MFA at the San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco in 2016. She has had solo and two-person exhibitions at 1599fdT, San Francisco, CA (2024; 2023); Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2018; 2016); amongst others. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Warren Flowers Gallery, Montréal, Canada (2024); Speedy Gallery, Santa Monica, CA (2024); Bass & Reiner, San Francisco, CA (2023; 2019); Jack Hanley Gallery, New York, NY (2023); Et Al Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2023); San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA (2021); NIAD Art Center, Richmond, CA (2018); The Kadist, San Francisco, CA (2018); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA (2018); amongst others.