TRAVELING THROUGH

Christoph Tannert 2022

„Die Welt braucht starke Gefühle und mehr Jazz“ (1)

Über die malerischen Soundteppiche von Stefano Bosis
Christoph Tannert, 

(English below)

Die in den Jahren 2021/22 in Öl auf Leinwand entstandenen Bilder des in Berlin lebenden Italieners Stefano Bosis überfallen ihr furchtloses Publikum wie ein aus mehreren Lebewesen zusammengewachsenes Fabeltier. Was der Künstler etwa in „She was hiding in the forest“, „The breath“, „The time when all was near“ oder „The wolf“ anbietet, ist das ultimative Freispiel eines Bildsüchtigen, der seinen ultimativen Weg der Selbstbefreiung eingeschlagen hat, auf dem er endgültig Abschied nimmt von der Figürlichkeit.

Bereits seit 2020 befindet er sich in einem Prozess der Verwandlung weg von der identifizierbaren Figur, hin zur puren Farbe.

Stefano Bosis sieht sich auf einer spirituellen Reise hin zum Verständnis dessen, was Menschsein ausmacht, zwischen Hölle und Paradies, die eigene Vergänglichkeit vor Augen „Riding a lion in the forest of the irremediably“).

Identität ist für ihn ein Prozess ständiger Veränderung. „Wir sind der Weg, den wir gehen“, sagt Bosis im Gespräch (2) und hofft sich auf den Wellen tiefer Gefühle dann gefunden zu haben, wenn es ihm gelingt, wie in einer Energieübertragung emotional komplett im Bilde zu sein. Dazu gehört auch die Konfrontation mit den eigenen Ängsten.

Bosis lässt sich im freien Strom seiner Inspiration davontragen, er erfindet Schöpfungen radikalen Künstlertums aus dem Kampf gegen die eigenen Dämonen – face your fear … hypnotize yourself – , ohne jemals das thematische Ufer aus dem Auge zu verlieren.

Es ist weniger das fertige Bild, das er vorausschaut, vielmehr sind es die Wellenbewegungen des Malflusses, denen er sich aussetzt. Stefano Bosis lässt sich vom Bild bewusst in einen Prozess hineinziehen, den er nicht vollständig steuern kann und auch nicht will.
In gewisser Weise malen sich seine Bilder selbst.

Intuitiv ergreift Bosis jede sich ihm bietende Gelegenheit, sich der Macht des Bildentstehungsprozesses anzudienen, sich zu überantworten. Vielleicht ist ja das Bild stärker als der Künstler? Wer weiß. Sich dem Unerprobten auszuliefern, kann eine erfrischende Erfahrung sein.

Stefano Bosis ist ein Musikliebhaber. Sound und Rhythmus animieren und tragen ihn zugleich. Ein Bild wie „The musician walking” kann insofern durchaus als Hommage an Heroen wie Miles Davis, Ludovico Ennaudi oder Demetrios Stratos verstanden werden.

Dramaturgische Rezepte oder psychologisch-manipulative Logiken für den Konfliktaufbau im Bild braucht Bosis nicht. Mit seiner gelassenen Selbstverständlichkeit und seiner Neugier bilden sich immer wieder ungeahnte Möglichkeiten des Farbverlaufs.

Dieser Maler, der angibt, wegen der Bilder des ostdeutschen Farbfeuerwerkers Bernhard Heisig in Deutschland hängengeblieben zu sein, ist ein Spezialist für das Wirklichkeitspotential der Farbe. Er treibt Farbe in Ausnahmezustände. So entstehen ästhetische Raritäten.Die Intensität seiner Farbausschweifungen erreicht zuweilen das Energielevel von Blitz und Donnergrollen.Manches wirkt gleichermaßen kosmisch wie urban, wie ein Sog, der uns durch den Traum einer magnetischen Wellen-Utopie zieht.Die ohnehin sehr zugänglichen dynamischen Pinselführungen entwickeln sich von Bild zu Bild mal in Richtung des Geschmeidigen, mal mehr in Richtung eines Stimmungsaufbaus, mal mehr in Richtung einer bewussten Akzentuierung.

Die Malerei von Stefano Bosis dürfte in Deutschland, dem Land der Expressionisten, polarisieren. Es gibt Werke von ihm, in denen hat der Künstler die Langsamkeit entdeckt, so tiefenentspannt kräuseln sich die Spuren seiner Achtsamkeitsübungen. Doch das ist spätestens vergessen, wenn einem das abgedrehte „Shaman of Oporapa“ (zurückgehend auf Erlebnisse in Kolumbien) ein Schleudertrauma verpasst. Scheren im Kopf gibt es bei Bosis nicht. Im Wechselmodus von Flanieren und Unter-Strom-Stehen erweitert er seinen Bilderfundus. Stefano Bosis ist Kraftmensch und Sensualist. Im Klimawechsel ist er mit sich identisch. Geläufiges und Befremdliches, Freispiel und atmosphärische Bindung umkreisen sich in Unermüdlichkeit.

“The world needs strong feelings and more jazz” (1)
About Stefano Bosis’ picturesque carpets of sound, Christoph Tannert

The paintings by Berlin-based Italian Stefano Bosis, created in 2021/22 in oil on canvas, attack their fearless audience like a mythical animal that has grown together from several living beings. What the artist offers in “She was hiding in the forest”, “The breath”, “The time when all was near” or “The wolf” is the ultimate free game of a person addicted to imagery who has embarked on his complete and utter path of self- liberation, on which he finally bids farewell to figuration.
Since 2020 he processes the transformation away from the identifiable figure towards pure color.
Stefano Bosis  finds  himself on a spiritual journey towards an understanding of what it means to be human, between hell and paradise, with his own transience in mind (“Riding a lion in the forest of the irremediably”). For him identity is a process of constant change. “We are the way that we go,” says Bosis in conversation (2) and hopes to discover himself on the waves of deep feelings, when he succeeds in being emotionally completely present, as in an energy transmission. This also includes confronting his fears.
The free stream of Bosis´ inspiration carries him away, creations of radical artistry emerge from  fighting his demons – face your fear … hypnotize yourself – without ever losing sight of the thematic shore.
It is less the finished picture that he anticipates, he rather exposes himself to the undulations of the painting flow. Stefano Bosis is consciously drawn into a process he neither can nor wants to fully control. In a way, his paintings paint themselves.  Bosis intuitively surrenders to the power of the picture-making process whenever he can. Perhaps the picture is stronger than the artist? Who knows. Surrendering to the untried can be a refreshing experience.

Stefano Bosis is a music lover. Sound and rhythm equally animate and sustain him. Paintings like “The musician walking” can be understood as a homage to heroes like Miles Davis, Ludovico Ennaudi or Demetrios Stratos. Bosis´ painted construction of conflicts does not acquire dramaturgical instructions or psychologically manipulative logics. His relaxed naturalness and his curiosity keep forming undreamt-of possibilities of the color gradient.

Bosis is a specialist in the reality potential of color, just like East German firework-like painter Bernhard Heisig, for whose work Bosis claims he stayed in Germany. He drives color into states of emergency. This is how aesthetic rarities are created.
The intensity of his color excesses at times reaches the energy level of lightning and thunder. Some things seem equally cosmic and urban, like a pull dragging us into the dream of a magnetic wave-utopia.
The very accessible dynamic brushwork changes from painting to painting, leaning at times towards suppleness or building up moods, at times more towards conscious accentuation.

In Germany, the land of the Expressionists, Stefano Bosis’ paintings are likely to polarize.
In some of his works the artist discovers tranquility, so deeply relaxed are the traces of his mindfulness exercises.
But that is forgotten as soon as the wacky “Shaman of Oporapa” (going back to experiences in Colombia) creates a whiplash. Bosis does not hold back. Alternating between strolling and being electrocuted he expands his pool of imagery. Stefano Bosis is a strong person and sensualist. In a constant climate change he feels true to himself. The familiar and the peculiar, free play and atmospheric connection relentlessly circle each other.

In “Bonjour Monsieur Courbet” (a bow to the great Gustave Courbet and his 1854 painting of the same name) he blasts off like a hurricane. “Settling in to my desert” and “Riding a lion in the forest of the irremediably” are related in their shrill willingness to break out, which is rootet in internal devastation. The border crossing of the painter’s paw unites them. A distanced power underlines the brush route of desire. Violence dominates over joy. In the last two years, Bosis permanently pulls out all the painterly stops. Dizzily overexcited the artist drags us into a turbulent universe whose restless surface never calms down.

Stefano Bosis’ determination can stoke the ember of dreams (“The sleeper in the valley”).
When he examines his ego without intention, without authority, there is an experience of softness, of elegiac smoothness. This is how different climates meet.
In this way, the painter purposefully creates furious arcs of suspense in an exhibition.

Quotes: Stefano Bosis in a studio conversation with the author on October 13, 2022

CORRISPONDENCES

Domenico De Chirico 2021

(English Below)

Di matrice odeporica, tra slanci gestuali e reminiscenze narrative che attingono a esperienze di viaggio realmente vissute dall’artista, spaziando, tra gli altri, dall’Europa al Messico, dal Guatemala a Cuba, la pittura vivida, sciamanica e olistica di Stefano Bosis enuncia una straordinaria visione del mondo volta ad unificare l’inconscio alla realtà esterna e viceversa e a delineare la funzione della pittura stessa, una funzione di tipo mistico, volta a decantare le forme materiali della natura come simboli di una realtà più profonda e autentica
che si colloca intensamente al di là delle cose. Le creazioni pittoriche di Bosis si fanno così gestuali, consistenti e materiche, altresì empiriche e sono profondamente connotate da forme, segni e colori accesi, talvolta accecanti, poiché, tra figure e paesaggi, la luce è l’elemento indiscusso che unifica mirabilmente tutti gli altri componenti che costituiscono il proscenio. Tutto ciò, ha certamente contribuito alla formazione di un pensiero e di una poetica personali che a chiare note suggeriscono di accarezzare una dimensione
irrazionale scevra da scienza e tecnica. Per di più, secondo Bosis, l’artista ha il compito di esplorare le forze della natura e di trascriverle secondo modalità formali che si identificano con una nuova possibilità di
visione del reale, dal momento che il mondo è un insieme organico di elementi, dotato di una propria sensibilità e di una natura autonoma che è in grado di comunicare e trasmettere informazioni perpetue,
imprevedibili e indelebili. Tra caos e armonia, realtà e fantasia, la pittura sinestetica di Bosis, completamente immersa nel ciclo delle quattro stagioni, compone un nuovo spartito musicale dal carattere
vivace e aurorale, dove da un lato il colore altisonante e fantasioso, accelerando e trattenendo, echeggia note inedite e dall’altro il gesto emotivo e concreto fraseggia una o più storie legate a quel senso di bellezza che ancora oggi risulta essere inenarrabile, destreggiandosi tra diminutivi e superlativi giacché nulla esclude.
L’olio si espande deflagrante sulla tela, esibendosi, ad libitum, in un tripudio di colori in cui Bosis invita l’astante a perdersi per poi invitarlo a sbrigliare la capacità percettiva di cui egli dispone al fine di poter godere dell’esperienza plurisensoriale regalataci in questo nuovo capitolo che porta il nome di
Correspondances.

Of an odaporic nature, between gestural thrusts and narrative reminiscences drawn from travel experiences genuinely lived by the artist, spanning, among others, from Europe to Mexico, from Guatemala to Cuba, Stefano Bosis’ vivid, shamanic, and holistic painting enunciates an extraordinary vision of the world aimed at unifying the unconscious with the external reality and vice versa, while outlining the function of painting itself, a mystical function  designed to distill the material forms of nature as symbols of a deeper, more authentic reality that intensely lies beyond things.

Bosis’ artistic creations become thus gestural, substantial, and tactile, as well as empirical, deeply marked by forms, signs, and bright colors, sometimes blinding. Since, between figures and landscapes, light is the undisputed element that wonderfully unifies all the other components of the scene.

All this has certainly contributed to the formation of a personal thought and poetics  that clearly suggest embracing an irrational dimension free from science and technique.

Furthermore, according to Bosis, the artist’s task is to explore the forces of nature and transcribe them in formal modes that identify with a new possibility of perceiving the real, since the world is an organic whole of elements, endowed with its own sensitivity and an autonomous nature capable of communicating and transmitting perpetual, unpredictable, and indelible information.

Between chaos and harmony, reality and fantasy, Bosis’ synesthetic painting, fully immersed in the cycle of the four seasons, composes a new musical score with a lively and auroral character, where on one side, the loud and imaginative color, accelerating and holding back, echoes unheard notes, and on the other, the emotional and concrete gesture phrases one or more stories linked to that sense of beauty which remains, even today, ineffable, balancing between diminutives and superlatives since nothing is excluded.

The oil expands explosively on the canvas, performing, ad libitum, in a flourish of colors where Bosis invites the observer to lose themselves, then encouraging them to unleash their perceptive capacity in order to fully enjoy the multisensory experience offered in this new chapter named Correspondances.

LUCID DREAMS

Marie Eve La Fontaine, 2017

Plura locuturum timido Peneia cursu⁠
fugit cumque ipso verba inperfecta reliquit
“With fearful running, Daphne fled him about to say more,
and she left the unfinished words with him himself;”
Ovid, Met.1 525-526

Like the stories of the Latin poet Ovid, the paintings of Stefano Bosis emphasize the necessity of transformative emotion. They pulse with a vital energy, betraying the pure pleasure of existence, like the hallucinogenic process of overcoming the limits of one’s physical and mental boundaries.
This is no coincidence. As a practitioner of meditative processes, Bosis is used to bending the properties of materials both mental and physical. On canvas, his brushwork forcefully articulates the tactile surfaces of his compositions: swirls of firework impasto and waves of colour lap out of the picture plane with an almost palpable joy. A riot of crests and waves fuses to articulate figures, barely discernable, drawn under by the sheer force of expression.
In a world where seventy percent of the population is starving and the other thirty percent is on a diet, such depictions swing between the pleasures and the pains of existence.

Bosis plays with conceptions of the modern world by grappling with themes of physicality and metaphor. Narratives take on forms of memories and time, love and xenophobia. In portraying causations that demonstrate, as in the case of Apollo, the futility of desire, he makes visible to the urgent crisis of contemporary capitalism and the effects thereof. The world, shown in all its contradictions through the fun-house mirror of irony, appears as if as if from the wrong end of the telescope. Eve reaches out not for an apple, but an iPhone. Leaving nature behind we are doomed to abandon paradise again and again, too absorbed by the idiotic apps on our mobiles to notice the bountiful garden around us. Wrapped up in the mundane details of everyday life we are blind to the opportunity for happiness in every minute of existence.

In our capitalist or rather post-capitalist society, where objects are treated as people and people as objects, we reduce ourselves to pieces in a never-ending game to gain more followers, more likes, more superficial self-love, resulting in an anticipated future which constantly arrives before the present. The solution lies in a total transformation: a reclaiming of one's own time, returning to the nature from which we spring. To express true creativity, it is necessary to live solely in the moment.
One of Bosis’s works in particular takes up the concept of mutation, a concept very dear to the artist’s heart. He portrays the moment of capture in which Daphne begs her father the river god for an escape. Moved by her prayers, he transforms Daphne into a laurel tree. Apollo – a sort of representative for our egos, fears, stresses, and anxieties – is forced to accept the only solution possible: to embrace nature. We too, like Apollo, must learn to embrace. It is nature in the end that forces us to accept ourselves as we are. If we do not change, we cannot evolve. And in the end, the material desires which we pursue will always evade us, leaving us like Apollo with our words caught our mouths. If we cannot exist with presence, meaning, and compassion in this life, how can we exist at all?