It’s January 20th, 2021.  I love the beginning of the year and the sense of renewed creativity it brings.  Surprisingly, 2020 was one of my most prolific years in the art studio the many challenges the pandemic has created.  This month in the studio, I’ve been putting the finishing touches on framing the artworks from […]

As an artist, I like to think of natural systems as a fascinating reference where I can learn to understand myself and others.  I see it in the co-operation of a flock of migrating geese, bees constructing geometric hives and even electrons and protons in balance forming a single atom.  Each of these contain an […]

This is Tunnel Boom, the latest release to the 2020 series, Incompressible Flow.  The title draws on the imagination of shock waves of compressed air releasing with massive force.  However we envision this piece in our memories, in the confines of this tunnel vision is the accumulation of something powerful happening. Here’s an amazing video […]

Let me introduce my newest art release, Piston Effect.  Of course it doesn’t look even remotely related to it’s early 19th century photographic process, nor does it need too.  It’s tell a different story. I often underplay how I make my art for a reason, it gets in the way.  I believe the art that excites […]

This next artwork is titled Gradient Advantage, making reference to of a term used for describing geological formations in relation to water flows. Continuing the theme of Incompressible flow, this piece volleys the question, could there ever be a favorable position of advantage in a system of perpetual motion?

Tangential Grasps is the next new introduction to the Spring 2020 series. Emerging at all edges are flowing tube-like shapes of light travel out of darkness into a cool-white collective. Within the center core only hints the flowing movements turbulently swirling into a primordial soup of change and chance.

In January, as initiated my spring 2020 series, I had no idea that we were headed into a global crisis of health, heart and mind.  I knew I wanted to make a series of abstract works that thematically worked with two concepts.  First, Incompressible, as a state of defiant resistance to increasing pressure.  Second, Flow […]

It’s a pleasure to share an exciting book project that aims to capture 93 artists working in Spring 2020.  You’ll find many familiar Los Angeles artist, including myself.  Try previewing the book and look alphabetical towards S’s.  If you like what you see, why not support a fresh narrative that reflects on our time together.Cheers!

The inspiration for this work, Turbidity Current originates as fast-moving currents that are intermixing with a fury of inky saturation.  With this new body of work, I’m reflecting on the movements and currents that surround us, in part as an abstraction to reflect upon the currents we allow to flow into our lives. The term […]

How and why I make my light activated art are so intertwined it can be a challenge to break them apart.  How open minded are you to let me share why scale matters?  Ignite the experience!The scale of the art is not what is most important to me, but the size of the impression in the […]

I’m not sure if you have a similar experience, but there are a handful artworks that I regularly think about to help bring clarity to difficult moments.  Since the rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus and it’s all consuming anxiety, there has been one piece of artwork that has been asking me to come closer and […]

Here’s the 2nd piece from my Spring 2020 series, Incompressible Flow. The central idea for this series is resiliency.  Thinking about the flow of movement, it can be diverted, but not compressed or compromised in nature.  The title for this piece is Squeezability Cipher.  Like squeezing a water balloon, the contents appropriately only flow around.  […]

Introducing Spring 2020 Series.The studio has been an absolute creative powerhouse the last 3 months – and still going.  It feels amazing to be exploring, experimenting and seeing how the series is coming together as a larger body of work. These light based artworks fill the gap between painting and emulsion based photography.  The central theme […]

It was a pleasure for all that came out to the Ligne Roset design party on Thursday night where I had 10 artworks on view.   So far, the first week has been an amazing success with sales and new partnerships in the works. If you missed the party and are in LA or OC area, […]

 February 12 – April 24, 2020  Selections from the Inherent Trajectories and Junctions series are on view at Ligne Roset, the high-end French modern furniture design center.    Ligne Roset & Poliform, Kaz Design Group,  3323 Hyland Ave.  Costa Mesa, CAP: 657-900-2225 Art: Departures From LinearityDesign: PUMPKIN by Pierre Paulin Art: Ecotone UnificationDesign: TOGO by […]

During a fruitful meeting with a collector last week, I was asked, “how long does it take to make one of your artworks?”.  I had a fresh perspective to share.  The last 2 month in the studio been kind of like hitting my head against a brick wall, then getting all excited afterwards to try it […]

This is Precariously Bright.  It has intense, vibrating, white hot energy as if it is falling into a tipping point.  A place of uncertainty.  There’s this sense of a shooting star that you know only happens for a brief moment and it’s gone.  And, that’s this moment this work is about.   The way I work […]

Let me introduce, Crimson Belligerence, a piece distinguished by vibrant ultramarine and crimson meteorological like clusters, vibrating and dissembling with atmospheric intensity.  This piece reminds me to evaluate the speed in which perceived change occurs (as in worse case scenario need not be the default). The geometric shards have a feather-lightness to their mass, as if […]

I’ve been working with abstraction for quite some time now, and it’s a very powerful thing.  It’s a language that allows us to communicate together without being restricted by the noun, by who I am and who are you.  It allows us to just get all that out of the way and have a dialog […]

Let me introduce, Labyrinth of Memories, a photogram that is unlike many of my works, its not full of releasing, kinetic movement.  It has colored layers that collectively appear wedged into immovable confinement.  If I was to use one word to describe this piece it would be, ‘snug’. The title for this piece also plays with […]

In light activated artwork Lyrical Dissonance, there is a kind of pulsing tension between the two contrasting color bars that are surrounded by hazy atmospherics. With this piece, I was looking to create movements that set-off a series of chain of reactions.  There is a staging of two opposing forms, in blue and yellow.  This […]

I create to engage, jostle and spar as if it’s an art is an ethical act.  I seek out the collapse of structural systems.   The NEW emerges from the fragments of our past thought.  This is reflected in the series, Precariously Bright, distinguished by auras of colorful meteorological like clusters, vibrating and disassembling with […]

It’s hard to imagine, but it wasn’t that long ago that the common perception in the art world was ‘photography was not art’.  Even in the 1990’s within the safe confines of a New York City art school, it was hotly debated.  The NYC gallery scene all but confirmed it was gospel as well.  “Photography” […]

One of my sources of inspiration as an artist using experimental photography, is light itself. Light has been the defining element in my life, in part for much the same reasons as philosophers and scientists have been drawn to it over the millennia.   Light is like no other substantive experience. It is instantaneous, yet […]

It wasn’t that long ago, when we used to buy a new album, crank it up, playing it over-and-over as if we have nothing else in our music collection. With each loop, we internalize the rhythms, memorizing the lyrics, and yes, sing along – experiencing the music deeper. I wanted to share, this small piece […]

Awash in violet and magenta, Predictive Vapor is a vibrant piece from my newest series that exemplifies the contrasting elements of both whizzing movement and momentary stillness.  I like to think of the crisp stillness as a temporary suspension, hovering in a momentary reprieve, surrounded by a blur of movement.

The multi panel installation of photogram \’Precariously Bright\’ seamlessly locked together like a dream for the exhibition, Photography Expanded.  All the aluminum framing fabrication was done in-studio. 

The title for this piece, Paragon En Masse is composed as an image of fractured shards in a state of collapse. The fragments caught in movement invoke a sense of gravitational  heaviness in movement. The title is meant to behold the irony of excellence of the highest level for everyone.  A highly improbable ideology in […]

Indeed life it too short to repeat oneself and I believe that is important for my art as well.   There is confusion sometimes with my artwork being a hybrid between painting and photography, that the photograms are copies or duplicates, just like photographs are from an original negative or digital file.  Nope!  Each piece […]

The conceptions of my art begins as large translucent paintings in a hard-edge minimalist style.   Once the painting is done, the theater of light begins.   The best way to control light is in total darkness.  Using  traditional photo-paper acting as my canvas.  I roll out giant sheets of photo paper and lay the translucent […]

One of the elements I love about my work, is it leaves no trace of the artist.  There’s no surface brushstrokes or impasto to project a sense of the artists state-of-mind.  There’s just a slick, glossy-wet and seductive materiality across the surface that plays with our sense of unfamiliarity.  There is the texture of paint, […]

The title for this piece “Supreme Delight” is inspired from the rye and middle-aged humor of novelist Phillip Roth in American Pastoral.   “the supreme delight of the afternoon, is simply finding that you haven’t made it onto the “In Memoriam” page.”  Indeed the simple things, found in the delight to still be alive and kicking. […]

“Richard Slechta’s “Boundary Value” is especially engaging because it evokes a sense of wonder besides its visual appeal. Geometric abstract forms and vigorous color come together resplendently in his work. But the image stands at the intersection of science and metaphysics, holding a bit of mystery. Created using light and pigment (no camera), his photograms […]

For many years, my artwork series teeter back-and-forth between high-key, white and airy collections and low-key, dark,  inky and heavy collections, like this piece Variable Reentry.  They each serve their own purpose, to uplift and investigate something deeper.  One thing I’ve come to see in my work, is that dark doesn’t necessarily mean dark in […]

One of most important principles I keep in mind in the creative process, asking “is my art coming from a place of genuine intention founded in others?” Contrary to and probably shock to many, I don’t consider my artwork to be about me. I’m reminded by this daily, in a quote posted near my studio […]

I often get asked, what set me on the the path to become an artist?  I imagine people expect to hear a story of natural born talent, with the glowing aura of ‘protege’.  The truth is, I’m one of those odd-balls where I was really crystal clear on what I wanted to do with my life […]

The piece Boundary Value reminds me of the quote by Italian physicist, Carlo Rovelli “Reality is not as clear-cut as it seems.”  Within this spiraling kaleidoscope-like geometric pattern, begins the adventure into perception.  

If you enjoy art as much as I do, you probably have a mental list of artworks you want in your collection.  I like to imagine those pieces that will simultaneously excite and complement the art and ideas that already fill my home.  I see them as my Future Collection, as something that is a […]

Everything about Galvanized Imperfection points to the moments that immediately proceed. The halo of white light are a metaphysical counterpoint to the other artworks in this collection.  Vibrating with potential energy, there is a hopeful sense that regardless of what could be anticipated, there is a perfection embedded in the readiness of time.

No matter how abstracted or non-representational the artwork veer towards, there are two forces that regularly pull our minds into the familiar; horizon and gravity.  Rather than resists, I embrace them as elements that play with the dynamism of the action.  

One of the driving questions I held during the creation of this collection was around the perils of uncontrollable uncertainty. This piece, Garden Variety Singularity is a prime example of this precarious state of accelerated motion. I’m reminded of the quote by race car driver, Mario Andretti, “If everything seems under control, you’re not going […]

I always enjoy seeing the perspective of curators and interior designers in how they choose to pair artworks together that builds on a common thread, further expanding the narrative.  Enjoy the new release from the Precariously Bright Collection.

In the serene blue and purple blend into the dark hues of stillness set the environment to be suddenly disrupted by explosive force and cascading geometric debris. The title Reciprocal Ablation refers the cyclical nature of change and exchange.

I’m not sure if it’s the naivety of youth that allows our early influences to run the profoundly deepest.  This was certainly true for me as a young artist and what propelled me to dedicate much of my life to the camera less photographic medium, the photogram.  It was 1992, art school and I already […]

Villa di Donato, Napoli  May 29 – June 10, 2019 Entering the 18th. century Villa di Donato, with candle light leading the way created a magical opening night into the Naples exhibit.  Inside, the art exhibition came alive with a nod to both history and our contemporary moment.  Perfectly juxtaposed for thematic exhibition, Edge of […]

Villa di Donato, Naples May 29 – June 10, 2019 It’s a pleasure to introduce my newest series ‘Ether of the Homeland’ for Summer 2019.   This work is a look through the lens into the American Dream beheld by my immigrating family four generations ago and how it reflects onto our vision of the […]

The titled ‘Ablation Season’, is a period during which glaciers lose more mass than they gain; usually coincides with summer. It reminds me there are seasons of change for everything, nothing in life is static.

Ripe with pastoral vignettes typical to most early 20th century propaganda, the stage is set for a combustive double entendre within the artwork’s title Ether of the Homeland.   The tossing narrative imagery of broken shackles, blindfolds removed, beers toasted and youth’s promise rising to the smell of prosperity. The ether is in the air […]

Surprisingly as an artist, I still enjoy hearing the stories and passions of art collectors.  It’s a healthy reminder for an artist, that the enjoyment of a collection isn’t just about the jazz of consumption. With this in mind, I must share a recently discovered collectors website solely dedicated to interviewing and understanding the passions […]

This entire series began with a single spark, loaded with the call for equality, justice and dignity.  A woman in her might, breaking loose the chains of oppression above her head.  Printed in 1919, one of the first stamps, as a free and independent country at the end of WWI.  Cleverly printed only a couple […]

One of my favorite new pieces released in 2019 is Plentiful Abundance.  There’s a lot going on in this piece, so let me share a few of my indulgences.  There’s flexing masculinity, youthful breasts and old-timers toasting beers to the spoils of productivity.  Apples and fish are brimming in their baskets as the postage era promises […]

Gallery 825, West Hollywood February 9 – 22, 2019 It’s a pleasure to introduce my newest series ‘Ether of the Homeland’ for spring 2019.   This work is a look through the lens into the American Dream beheld by my immigrating family four generations ago and how it reflects onto our vision of the future. […]

This is Equivocal Intersection, one of my fondest from this series as it calls on us to draw attention to not what is directly visible in front of us, but what is in our periphery.  That narrow space between recognition and out of sight, that somehow seems to be wired to a more intuitive part […]

This extraordinary close-up detail of Mounting Reserves, really gets me thinking about, not so much “what” it is… but “how” it behaves, slowly unfolding in this soft pool of light.  I see a delicate sensuality of grace.

University of Arizona Museum of ArtMay 26 –  September 9, 2018 Closing Reception & Artist TalkSeptember 6th 5-7PM

Inflection Point exemplifies the core theme in my newest series, ‘Cascades’. What stands out differently is the dominate rigid blue bar that appears in so many other works, is now taken a contoured form. Its whipping movement, launches the shard like glass into a maelstrom of kinetic flight. Aptly titled ‘Inflection Point’, the interplay between […]

I imagine you all know my work well, but perhaps less about who I call my friendly competition – the rigorous circle of contemporary artists that also work within the genre of experimental, non-camera based photography. Not exactly mainstream, but it’s growing lure is an art genre that draws on older traditions of pre-digital methods […]

Mary Hardin Center for Cultural Arts January 13 – April 28, 2018   The Mary Hardin Center for Cultural Arts, presents 20 works by Richard Slechta for his solo exhibition ‘Cascades’.   About the work: In his photograms, Richard Slechta engages the basic dyad of presence and absence, giving it a striking immediacy. His art […]

Nestled above the Sunset Strip in the Hollywood Hills, Slechta’s artworks become a feature of this modernists Tag Front architectural gem.

California Center for the Arts, Escondido September 29 –  November 12, 2017 Artists Lecture:  October 15th   The California Center for the Arts, Escondido will present 17 works by Richard Slechta for the group exhibition surveying the varied conceptual approaches to photography.  Richard will be featuring nearly all new works including the much anticipated installation, […]

I love the time of year when I open up the studio to friends and collectors to get a first look of my new series, Cascades.  Another delicious Studio BBQ wraps up the 2017 year.

An important part of my studio practice is “how” I make my art.  This “how” informs the intent that is embedded in the works.  The glistening and pristine surface of the photo paper, only quietly whispers to the materials and mannerisms of its making.  Draw closer and enjoy this video.

Gallery Projektraum M54, Art Basel, Switzerland ‘Ping Pong’, June 13-19, 2016 Richard joined the curated exhibition at gallery Projektraum M54, running with Art Basel, Switzerland.

Art ReviewGallery Projektraum M54, Art Basel, SwitzerlandJune 13-19, 2016Gallery Projektraum got a nice write up in the local Basil newspaper for Art Basel Week. Basler Zietung Review

Exhibiting: Art Basel, SwitzerlandJune 13-19, 2016Richard’s artwork arrived in Basel on Friday in advance preparation for the curated exhibition at gallery Projektraum M54, running with Art Basel. Richard is looking forward to flying-out in less than two weeks to partake in the full spectrum of exhibitions and introduce his work to the European audience. We […]

A few introductory photos from Richard’s studio, located in the Downtown LA Arts District.

Ping Pong LA @ LA Art ShowJanuary 27-31, 2016 Richard joined the curated exhibition, ‘Ping Pong’ at the LA Art Show, the 200,000 square foot modern and contemporary art fair that welcomed more than 60,000 art enthusiasts to the Los Angeles Convention Center.  For this exhibition Richard introduced new works from the ‘Junctions’ collection. 

After traveling to four beautiful museum and 7000 miles, the artwork has come back to the studio for a few months.  New museum exhibits already in the planning. 

A Delicious 2015 BBQRichard’s Annual Open Studio & BBQ is located in the Downtown LA Arts District, two blocks from the renowned L.A. River surrounded by galleries and hipster coffee shops and scrap yards.  This is always a great time to explore my studio, learn more about my art making practice and most importantly, see […]

The International Museum of Art and Science in Texas has acquired a piece for their permanent collection.  This makes the second museum to acquire Richard’s work in 2015.

October 16, 2015 – January 10, 2016 The Science Spectrum Museum is hosting the solo exhibition featuring 25 works from Richard Slechta’s ‘Inherent Trajectories’ series.  The artworks are playful expressions of kinetic and potential energies releasing speed and gravity amidst fields of pure space.  These are creations based in chemistry, physics and light that exemplify […]

International Museum of Art and Science ‘Inherent Trajectories’, Solo Exhibition May 28 – Sept 13, 2015 Richard was invited to present his current exhibition at the International Museum of Art and Science.  This is the third museum to host the ‘Inherent Trajectories’ exhibition and the first in Texas.

Photo Independent, Los AngelesMay 1-3, 2015 During the biggest week for contemporary photography in Los Angeles, Richard showcased new work at Photo Independent at Raleigh Studios, Hollywood.  This is adjacent from Paris Photo at Paramount Studios making for a fantastic dynamic duo of a weekend.

Museum of Arts & Sciences, GeorgiaInherent Trajectories, Solo Exhibition,January 16 – April 26, 2015Enjoy the video of the solo exhibition, Inherent Trajectories at the Museum of Arts and Sciences, GA

Solo Exhibition, Museum of Arts & Sciences, GeorgiaJanuary 16 – April 26, 2015 A solo exhibition, presenting 27 artworks from the ‘Inherent Trajectories’ collection at the Museum of Arts and Sciences.

‘Crosscurrent Junctions’ @ Gallery 825, Los AngelesJanuary 24 – February 20, 201510 x 46 feet, Light on photo paper Crosscurrent Junctions is a panoramic installation presenting a visual theater spanning across the gallery walls of Gallery 825 in Los Angeles.  Enjoy the video featuring the preparation, installation and opening debut. 

‘Crosscurrent Junctions’ @ Gallery 825, Los Angeles January 24 – February 20, 201510 x 46 feet, Light on photo paper Celebrating the open reception of Richard’s solo exhibition at Gallery 825, Los Angeles. Crosscurrent Junction a large-scale installation drawing on historical panoramic painting genre, presenting visual theater flowing across three walls at the Los Angeles […]

‘Inherent Trajectories’ a Solo Exhibition September 8 – October 10, 2014 Enjoy the video of the exhibition, Inherent Trajectories Wielding light and pigment, Slechta’s richly luminescent images investigate the boundaries of photographic abstraction through a hybrid of painting and photography.    These visceral images present the relationships between control, volatility and play.  Turbulent patterns and […]

‘Inherent Trajectories’ a Solo Exhibition Mattie Kelly Fine ArtsSeptember 8 – October 10, 2014 Wielding light and pigment, Slechta’s richly luminescent images investigate the boundaries of photographic abstraction through a hybrid of painting and photography.  These visceral images present the relationships between control, volatility and play.  Turbulent patterns and darting movements express the release of kinetic […]