(intriguing music) (brushes clattering) (intriguing music continues) - I think that each painting is a character, and they're just trying to get me to tease out something about them that I might not know yet.

(paint brush swishing) A lot of them are born out of daydreaming a lot.

They're at times absurd.

Sometimes they're funny.

Sometimes they're horrific.

They kind of convey that things just are the way that they are.

But yeah.

(laughs) (intriguing music continues) (intriguing music continues) (intriguing music continues) - I love Ralph's work because it's shocking and just not what you expect of a painting.

It's not like super polite portraiture.

It's not abstracted in a way that we're used to seeing like the old masters in museums do.

It's not often that a painting makes you laugh in a good way, and I think that that's a tremendous accolade to Ralph and his work.

(brush swishes) - Today I'm working on this painting that is a scene of people walking around in traffic.

There will be exhaust coming out of the cars, but then there are also people that will be smoking and vaping.

I think a lot of the works definitely have to do with like having to do something amidst not being certain about what they're doing.

I feel like that's a bad answer.

(laughs) So "Gym of the Night" came about having seen a talk show host interviewing a vampire.

Somehow I had imagined that this vampire's community has grown large enough that they would have their own gym to work out at.

"Meditation Contest" is about people that are competing in a meditation contest.

For me, despite the fact that we go into different spaces for healing, there are still remnants of like an unhealed world that we take along with us.

- There is a painting of men in suits weeping on a ski lift.

(playful music) I think the absurdity in Ralph's paintings is something that sticks with you for a really long time and makes you ask additional questions about like, how did we end up here, and what were the circumstances of this scene that he has painted?

(slow mellow music) - I was born in the Philippines and then lived in a province that's like an hour away from Manila.

Having immigrated to the US as a teenager was really rough, and so I think I did a lot of like escaping into video games, for example, "The Sims."

I think that has really influenced the way that I paint pictorially.

So yeah, like I consider a lot of the figures in my paintings are almost like sprites, and I'm just like rearranging them knowing that they can convey something to people as characters.

(visitors chattering) (soft rock music) I was trying to create a bridge between the paintings and the drawings.

- Just want to say congratulations.

- I know.

- Thank you so much.

The title of my show at Adams and Olman is called "The Longest Journey."

I love looking at people looking at the works.

I love hearing what they have to say about the works.

I get really curious about like how people might read something.

(Ralph laughs) - [Visitor] No, totally.

- Oh, they're being saved by the- - Yeah.

- It was giving me like colonialism vibes for sure.

- I'm thrilled to see him getting some attention for what he does because it's well deserved, and not enough art makes you laugh.

And so I'm glad that that's a space that he occupies, and I want to see room for more Ralphs in the art that we're looking at.

- [Ralph] If there's anything that I can hope that people get out of the work, I hope they're able to sort of like feel that life is not as flat as we would like to think.

They're not as alone and more connected to the things that are around them.

- [Interviewer] What do you see for your future?

- Oh God, (laughs) what a weird question.

I see my future continuing to like evolve and grow as an artist and like continuing to surprise myself maybe, like hopefully continuing to do this stuff because I love it so much.

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