Patti Oleon: Sideways

Edward Cella Art & Architecture is proud to present an exhibition of new paintings by Patti Oleon. This is the San Francisco-based artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and includes meticulously rendered oil paintings depicting interiors.

Upon receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013, Oleon traveled to Budapest, Prague, Venice, Berlin and Istanbul to photograph grand spaces rich in history, and devoid of human presence, such as theaters and museums. Working from multiple views of the same location, Oleon then re-constructs these places using Photoshop to alter light, transparency, color and focus. She then brings these composite images to the studio where she precisely translates the image in oil, counting Flemish painters and Germanic medieval works among her technical influences.

Viewers are presented with environments that appear startling in their verisimilitude, but are in truth heavily manipulated. Oleon states: “It is comfortable, soothing to know things are solid, that everyone experiences the same. But there is a sense of something subtly disturbing, either the light seems to be not quite right (perhaps it is too much the same on each side – as the light is identical when the image is mirrored), etc. and this could not exist in reality.” The architectural and natural facts give-way to a fractured reality with disorienting impossibilities, prompting the viewer to question how reality is perceived.