Jacques Bosser

French contemporary artist, born in Le Havre in 1946, Jacques Bosser enjoys an international reputation. His works have been the subject of exhibitions in France as well as in the USA in New York and Los Angeles, London, Tokyo, South Korea, Italy, Spain, Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium , in Luxembourg…

He currently lives and works in the Paris region.

Jacques Bosser has developed an empirical technique that he has been refining for more than forty years. Working in layers on wooden or paper supports, he applies color in successive layers. These layers are made up of pigments mixed with acrylic resin forming a chromatic paste. Water and air draw its patterns. The painting is thus gradually revealed, between layer and overcoat of paint. Influenced by the Japanese philosophy of Wabi Sabi, he leaves a part to chance and imperfection.

From tribal signs, a resurgence of his African childhood, to a floral theme, Jacques Bosser's sources of inspiration are multiple. He is sensitive to the poetry of forms that meet, intertwine, multiply, move away, get closer, overlap... Like musical notes, these forms are repeated in his work, enriched by chromatic flights, to offer the spectator a soft plastic melody. The repetitions of large flat areas of color, “Le colorfield” by Barnett Newman or Clyfford Still, seem to be a sphere of influence for the artist, but he adapts them to his own writing. The motif returns, from painting to painting, from year to year. It is “neither quite the same, nor quite another” (Paul Verlaine). It crosses the barriers of time and exhibitions. Like an Ariadne's thread, it links the artist's works by placing them in a context of chronological and thematic continuity. These patterns become writing, imprint, personal language. There is no doubt that Jacques Bosser has imprinted his style on the great book of art history.

Poet at heart Jacques Bosser has a Parnassian approach to the rhythmic organization of his works. Combining several supports (wooden boxes or Arche paper), he begins the realization of his painting with the most important piece in terms of volume. From this piece, he combines the other parts of his painting by playing romantically on shapes and colors. This plastic versification, between rigor and romanticism, provides the viewer with gentle emotional vibrations. An energy seems to circulate between the parts of the work, a mysterious link, a “flow of sensations” as the artist calls it. Hence the importance of this fragmented organization of the work which requires the artist to reflect for a long time in order to put the colors in tension, or, on the contrary, to melt them into a chromatic gradient.

The aesthetics of forms is combined with Jacques Bosser with a mastery of chromatic combinations. A dynamic relationship seems to exist between the different colors of the same plastic composition. These colors sweeten or energize each other. They are exhibited in a rhythmic choreography, forming arabesques that communicate with the other elements of the adjacent panels. They thus become sensation, emotion. The cheerfulness of the colors is also expressed in the relationships they have with the backgrounds on which they emerge and seem to be levitating.