Laura (the gallery) is pleased to present El Bosque, a solo exhibition by Houston-based, Venezuelan-born artist Gerardo Rosales, featuring new paintings that navigate the entangled realms of queer solitude, desire, and ecological refuge. In Rosales’s lushly patterned worlds, hybrid creatures—part human, part animal—emerge from vibrant fields of flora and ornament, while serpentine forms wind through dense compositions like maps of cruising paths and life’s nonlinear journey. Drawing from Latin American craft traditions, Gio Ponti’s architectural geometry, and the codified aesthetics of queer subculture, El Bosque invites viewers into a forest of symbols where beauty camouflages critique and myth becomes a mode of survival. The exhibition opens Saturday, July 12, and runs through August 23.
About the artist
Gerardo Rosales (born in Venezuela, lives and works in Houston, Texas) is a multidisciplinary artist whose vibrant, ornamental paintings draw from folk traditions, religious iconography, and decorative craft to explore the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality. His work has been exhibited widely across Latin America and the U.S., including CAMH Houston, The Moody Center, and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas, and is held in collections such as the McNay Art Museum, Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, and the Houston Endowment. Formerly a self-taught artist, Rosales earned his MFA from Chelsea College of Art in London and spent more two decades as an arts educator in Houston.
Above: El Bosque (Shedding Skin), 2025. Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 inches.
