Kasper Bosmans’s visual poems

Whether it is through painting, sculpture, or decorative arts, Kasper Bosmans cultivates a powerful visual poetry. His works are a form of seduction: he uses them, he says, to ‘fall in love.’ He makes color into a charm, while the graphic power of his line transforms his images into symbols reminiscent of folk art, whose aesthetic he holds dear. Each of his creations is meant to flood the spirit, like a fairy tale.

The artist has a predilection for the marginal stories of History with a capital H, which he excavates like an archaeologist and uses to question our societies’ mythologies. He blends these fragments of the past with elements from contemporary culture, infusing them with humor and absurdity. Above all, Bosmans extols, ‘a non-academic art that is accessible to all.’

Incorporating a mixture of disciplines and offering visitors the experience of an immersive forest room, the exhibition at Mendes Wood DM in Paris was conceived as a whimsical journey that plays with the eye. In the exhibition, the artist explores the tension between what we proudly display and what we prefer to conceal – a contemplation born of his discovery of a 16th-century belvedere in the Royal Garden of Prague Castle, which served as Emperor Rudolf II’s site of self-exile.

The stories that irrigate Bosmans’s work contribute to the construction of a safe space, or, as the architect Aaron Betsky titled his 1997 book, a ‘Queer space’ that will enable future generations of LGBTQIA+ artists to live and express their identity in total freedom.

Kasper Bosmans is represented by Gladstone Gallery (New York, Brussels, Rome, Seoul) and Mendes Wood DM (São Paulo, Brussels, New York, Paris).

Kasper Bosmans's exhibition, 'Plums, Under Cover', is on view at Mendes Wood DM, Paris from February 1 until March 23, 2024.

Zoé Isle de Beauchaine is an art historian and writer based in Paris.

Published on January 29, 2024.

English translation: Jacob Bromberg.

Caption for full-bleed image: Kasper Bosmans, A Key Sound in the Green (detail), 2024. Courtesy of the artist and Mendes Wood. Photos credit: Kristien Daem.