Jean-Pierre Roy’s futuristic and cataclysmic landscapes oscillate between utopia and dystopia and, like all science-fiction, reveal angst over present-day issues: in this case climate change or technology gone awry. The narrative and cinematic drama in the paintings by this West Los Angeles native and former film industry design and FX worker is heightened by his visually stunning precision and detail, which rival even today’s best CGI. In the manner of Mark Tansey, a postmodern history painter whose critical interpretations of western painting were formative for Roy, these works allegorize the contemporary artist’s struggle with the overwhelming weight of the western landscape tradition, specifically by quoting from works by a vast and diverse array of canonical painters.
Roy has participated in numerous group exhibitions in the US, Europe, and Asia and has had solo museum exhibitions at the Torrence Art Museum in Los Angeles and the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art in Virginia Beach. His work has been written about in The New York Times, The New York Post, ArtNews, Art in America, New American Painters, The Chicago Tribune, The Huffington Post, The Seattle Stranger, The Wall Street Journal, Hi- Fructose, and Juxtapoz amongst others. His work is in collections of Anita Zabludowicz, Jerry-Ann Cheney, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Jean Pigozzi, Leonardo DiCaprio and Bjorn Borg amongst others.