Outromer 1979

Ilya Bolotowsky made "Outromer" with paint, and its date is unknown. Look at how the shapes and colors are placed so deliberately - it's like a puzzle but one where the pieces don't quite fit together perfectly, and this is the point. The way Bolotowsky lays down these flat areas of color, the red, the black, and that super intense blue, makes me think about surface and depth. It's all right there on the surface, no illusions about it. You can almost feel the edges of the shapes, so clearly defined against the pale ground. That little stripe of yellow over there on the right, it’s like a tiny exclamation point, a burst of energy that punctuates the whole composition. Thinking about the way the blocks are stacked, it calls to mind the work of Mondrian, but with a playful twist. Bolotowsky seems to loosen things up a bit, inviting us to see the world in a new, unexpected way. In short, abstraction is just another way of telling a story.