Richard Bosman
September 10 – October 23, 2004
Mark Moore Gallery is pleased to announce Richard Bosman’s first solo West Coast exhibition in a decade. The exhibition follows up on Bosman’s critically acclaimed solo show in New York last year, an exhibition which provoked New York Times critic Roberta Smith to write, “The list of 80’s artists, especially painters, who have deepened their work in the ensuing years often seems depressingly short, but Mr. Bosman should be on it.”
In his recent work, Bosman brings his penchant for narrative tension and expressive paint handling to bear on the contemplative subject matter of the Northeastern tradition. Strokes of quick, luxuriant brushwork bring a quality at once antic and powerful to Bosman’s images of lakes and rivers, hunter’s lean-to camps and Adirondack roadside stores. While Bosman’s brush takes on the mantle of tradition typified by Fairfield Porter and Marsden Hartley, it also addresses the historicism of the people and places of the Northeast, not to mention the passing of time itself, recording depictions of off-the-beaten track historical sites and hunting lodges, where memorabilia and mounted heads appear together for posterity.
In her review of the Bosman’s 2003 solo show Roberta Smith also addressed his work vis- á -vis the recent shift toward figuration and narrative painting. “In the overcrowded field of painterly (wet-on-wet) representation – from Alex Katz or Neil Welliver to young artists like Dana Schutz and Daniel Richter – Mr. Bosman has refined and developed his style into something that more than holds its own ground,” she writes. Smith’s comments were echoed in the 8-person show, Contemporary Painting, curated by Alex Katz at the Colby College Museum of Art this spring, where Bosman’s work appeared in a context with pieces by Cecily Brown, Peter Doig, Laura Owens and Elizabeth Peyton–an indication of where Bosman fits in contemporary painting and his relevance to its cutting edge.
A painting by Richard Bosman appeared this spring in the group show Nature at Mark Moore Gallery. Bosman’s paintings and prints are in the collections of most major American museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art (New York) the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles).