ART-PRESENTATION:Kasper Bosmans-Model Garden

Kasper Bosmans is a shrewd observer of the ways in which images can teeter on the edge of nature and fiction, or art and craft. With an intuitive anthropological approach, he looks towards the remnants of local traditions and mythological iconography in contemporary life. Concerned with an associative beauty produced by play, Bosmans cuts across performance, painting, drawing, and sculptural installations through which he explores both functional and decorative forms, and evokes subtle correspondences between them.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Gladstone Gallery Archive

In his solo exhibition “Model Garden” at Gladstone Gallery in Brussels, Kasper Bosmans presents a suite of new paintings and objects. Kasper Bosmans gathers input from cultural memories (folk art, heraldry, maps, legends, alphabets and symbols) that were once common and close in his native Belgium. Kasper Bosmans has developed an almost naïve painting style, inspired by traditional heraldry, in which he unpretentiously juxtaposes those personal, local, art, historical and universal elements. He systematically arranges this acquired knowledge into “legends” (2013- ) a series of works on small wooden panels, all the same format, where encyclopedic and mythological anecdotes coexist in stylized, figurative forms. The series brings together several of the core motifs in Bosmans’ oeuvre as if a form of source code. Some of these motifs often crop up in his sculptural work too. Through these recognizable symbols painted in bold forms and with stark lines, the viewer is invited to “read” or to view his paintings as one would view a map. Formal elements and ideologies intrinsic to the studied phenomena open up a realm of meaning that both surpasses and celebrates their original functions. Every thread of investigation is incorporated into Bosman’s unique visual language and further translated into paintings and sculptural ensembles.

Info: Gladstone Gallery, 12 Rue du Grand Cerf, Brussels, Duration: 19/11/16-21/1/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-18:00, St 12:00-18:00, www.gladstonegallery.com