CIRCULAR RUINS II
Claire Johnson
Michal Korycki
Gabrielle Raaff
Isabelle Valode
Fleur de Bondt
RMB Latitudes, Johannesburg, South Africa
May 2026
Claire Johnson
Oddments Bag #8, Batch #1 & 2
2024
Oil on canvas (Framed)
130 x 184 cm
Claire Johnson
Oddments Study #2
2026
Oil on canvas (Framed)
73 x 53 cm
Claire Johnson
Oddments Study #1
2026
Oil on canvas (Framed)
73 x 53 cm
Claire Johnson
Oddments Bag #8, Batch #3
2024
Oil on canvas (Framed)
118 x 92 cm
SOLD
Michal Korycki
The Architects I
2026
Terracotta
12 x 12 x 48 cm
Michal Korycki
The Architects II
2025
Terracotta
10 x 10 x 45 cm
Michal Korycki
The Architects III
2025
Terracotta
12 x 10 x 41 cm
Michal Korycki
The Visionary
2026
Terracotta
19 x 11 x 33 cm
SOLD
Gabrielle Raaff
Wilderness
2026
Water-based oil and ink on cotton (Framed)
130 x 180 cm
Gabrielle Raaff
Cosmos
2026
Water-based oil and ink on cotton (Framed)
130 x 180 cm
Gabrielle Raaff
Disarray V
2026
Water-based oil and ink on wood (Framed)
48 x 60 cm
Gabrielle Raaff
Permitted Wildness
2026
Water-based oil and ink on cotton (Framed)
140 x 120 cm
Gabrielle Raaff
Making Order III
2025
Water-based oil and ink on cotton (Framed)
86 x 86 cm
Gabrielle Raaff
Disarray III
2026
Water-based oil and ink on wood (Framed)
48 x 60 cm
Gabrielle Raaff
Disarray IV
2026
Water-based oil and ink on wood (Framed)
48 x 60 cm
Gabrielle Raaff
Disarray I
2025
Water-based oil and ink on wood (Framed)
48 x 60 cm
Gabrielle Raaff
Disarrangement I
2026
Water-based oil and ink on cotton (Framed)
40 x 50 cm
Gabrielle Raaff
Making Order II
2025
Water-based oil and ink on cotton (Framed)
28 x 35 cm
SOLD
Gabrielle Raaff
Scheme I
2026
Water-based oil and ink on cotton (Framed)
80 x 50 cm
SOLD
Gabrielle Raaff
Scheme II
2026
Water-based oil and ink on cotton (Framed)
80 x 50 cm
Gabrielle Raaff
Scheme III
2026
Water-based oil and ink on cotton (Framed)
80 x 50 cm
Gabrielle Raaff
Vision I
2026
Water-based oil and ink on cotton (Framed)
140 x 120 cm
SOLD
Isabelle Valode
Abstraction 1
2026
Ceramic
20 x 19.5 x 26 cm
Isabelle Valode
Abstraction 2
2026
Ceramic
19.5 x 22 x 32 cm
Isabelle Valode
Abstraction 3
2026
Ceramic
19.5 x 19 x 22 cm
Isabelle Valode
Abstraction 4
2026
Ceramic
30 x 31 x 5.5 cm
Fleur de Bondt
Liminal
2026
Acrylic and oil on canvas (Framed)
86 x 51.5 cm
SOLD
Fleur de Bondt
Per Aspera ad Astra
2026
Acrylic and oil on canvas (Framed)
87 x 122 cm
SOLD
Fleur de Bondt
Apeture in a Monolith
2026
Acrylic and oil on canvas (Framed)
87 x 122 cm
Fleur de Bondt
Transforming Climb into Passage
2026
Acrylic and oil on canvas (Framed)
86 x 51.5 cm
SOLD
Fleur de Bondt
The Obstacle is The Way
2026
Acrylic and oil on canvas (Framed)
87 x 122 cm
SOLD
Fleur de Bondt
Passage Into Light
2026
Acrylic and oil on canvas (Framed)
42.5 x 124 cm
SOLD
Circular Ruins
“With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another”.
Circular Ruins takes its title from Jorge Luis Borges’ story of a man who dreams another into existence, exploring the fragile boundary between creation, impermanence, and reality. This presentation brings together the practices of Claire Johnson, Michal Korycki, and Gabrielle Raaff, each of whom inhabits a world of fragments, traces, and provisional form, inviting viewers into spaces where meaning remains open and unstable.
In Johnson’s assemblages of fabric, shadows, and overlooked objects, and Korycki’s skeletal clay structures, absence and incompletion become central. Johnson treats fragments of memory as evidence, imbuing the overlooked with narrative weight, while Korycki constructs frameworks that gesture toward solidity but remain vulnerable to collapse. Both practices reflect on what persists and what erodes, revealing that traces and ruins can be as expressive as finished forms.
Raaff’s fluid paintings enter dialogue with Johnson’s archival sensibility. Her watery pigments settle, shift, and dissolve, forming landscapes that hover between recognition and abstraction. Here, process itself is a collaborator: memory, chance, and time act upon the material, allowing meaning to emerge and fade, and emphasizing the instability of perception and recall.
Raaff’s canvases also resonate with Korycki’s engagement with impermanence. In the shifting forms of paint and the eroded surfaces of clay, the artists give physical expression to the passage of time. Structures, images, and memories appear, vanish, and reappear in altered forms, underscoring that creation and decay are inseparable.
Circular Ruins frames these works as part of a continuum between imagination and materiality, presence and absence, intention and surrender. Across fabric, clay, and paint, the presentation suggests that incompleteness is not a deficiency but a mode of encounter — a space where traces, erosion, and chance converge to reveal meaning in its most fragile and compelling form.
In circular Ruins II , we have added to our carefully chosen artist Isabelle Valode and Fleur de Bondt.
Isabelle works in ceramics using the technique of painted glaze on ceramics. She is an oil painter and has transitioned to the solidity of ceramics and glaze as her chosen technique , confronting her vulnerability through incompleteness of the painted image onto the ceramic pieces that are at once solid and functional. Just like Michal, she invites the element of surprise through rooted gesture of mark making that offers the viewer something to stimulate their imaginations through suggestion.
Fleur de Bondt an oil painter plays with surrealism through the portrayal of landscape, much like Gabbrielle’s pieces. In her surrealist landscapes the "rock" is a symbol which functions as a metaphor for "the obstacle is the way". Through personal adversity she sees the rock as a symbol that can be accepted ,shaped, and transformed through perception. Her pieces she feels are architectural, linking closely to Michal’s pieces. She paints and creates the spaces. Her enquiry is universal , as each person faces their own rock and radical acceptance can be the key to overcoming.
Circular Ruins II includes two new artists into the conversation where meaning and imagination are invited in a most fragile and compelling way. Each artist complementing one another and revealing similarities in personal experience.