2025 Solo Exhibition Slideshow

This show marks the conclusion of 20 years of pure abstract art expressed in various ways and in a variety of designs, shapes, color relationships, and the use of different configurations, combinations, surfaces (canvas and wood) with acrylic paint in two dimensions. I experimented with extending my work into three dimensions in the last three years, first with acrylic on angular wood sculptures, and then evolving into acrylic on PVC hollow plastic cylinder "tree sculptural" columns.

I have had the good fortune and the opportunity, beginning in 2020, to have 4 exhibitions of my abstract work in the spacious main (Gill) gallery of the Pacific Grove Art Center (2020, 2022, 2024 and 2025)--two of them solo shows and two of them jointly with my talented colleagues: Marilyn Kuksht, abstract metal sculptor, and Tazio Childress, Abstract Expressionist painter.

Since 2005, I have been a Geometric Abstractionist, influenced by the Neo-Plasticism of Mondrian and my uncle, Ilya Bolotowsky. But over the course of this 20 year span, I evolved from that formalism to embrace curvilinear abstraction and biomorphic design, as well.

In the 2024 joint show, I exhibited for the first time 4 of the wood sculptures that I considered to be derivative to my paintings. They were displayed approximately parallel to the paintings around 8 feet from the wall to give viewers multiple visual perspectives of the inter-relationships between the paintings and the sculptures. (Please refer to the slideshow of the 2024 joint exhibition which illustrate this interaction).

In this 2025 solo exhibition, I explored carrying this experimentation forward by attempting to fully integrate the 2-D paintings and/or painting combinations with the 3-D "tree sculpture" columns consisting of 7 hollow acrylic on PVC plastic cylinders with geometric designs and color relationships that were related to and suggestive of the 2-D paintings reinforced by their locations among the paintings.

I consider this show to be a transition exhibition. It is not only about me and my art and its development over the last 20 years, but the "passing of the baton" to an upcoming generation of talented grandchildren whom I hope will go on to develop their own creative talents in any way they choose. May my artistic oeuvre over these years serve as a platform or guide posts for informing and stimulating their own creative imaginations.

Ralph Joachim artist, May 2025