Richard Bosman: Raw Cuts

Since he first emerged on the art scene in the early 1980s, Richard Bosman has been a master of what he terms the “ambiguous narrative”. In his early days, he was associated with the neo-expressionist movement, and gained attention and notoriety for loosely painted figural tableaux that often featured disturbing and violent scenarios – among them people drowning, brandishing weapons, and graphically perpetrating or suffering carnage. Though critics linked the works to an environment of crime and violence that surrounded New York’s East Village milieu which birthed neo expressionism, in fact, Bosman’s sources were comic books, Kung Fu and other forms of pop culture.

Today, the narratives in his works remain ambiguous, but they are quieter, and more freighted with psychological significance. While he continues to paint, he is also an accomplished printmaker. The works in this show reveal his facility with woodblock and linoleum relief. He notes that for him, painting is an additive process while printmaking is a reductive one, as he cuts away at the block to create his image. The result, as this series reveals, are simple, but potent images that encourage multiple readings. Still drawn to sources in popular culture, which he now gathers not only from films and comic books, but also from the internet, Bosman focuses here on closely cropped scenes full of foreboding, sexual tension, and unexplained anticipation. While there is no clear plot, viewers find themselves linking images to create any number of open-ended storylines. -Eleanor Heartney
Richard Bosman’s “Raw Cuts” a collection of woodcuts printed by the artist himself is on view at Cross Contemporary Art in Saugerties through Nov 3, 2014