The film ‘Blue Velvet’ by the director David Lynch opens with a magnificent scene. We see part of a sun-drenched street in an American suburb. Detached houses, their occupants doing the gardening. All of a sudden, although in slow motion, a bright red fire engine fills the screen.
A fireman on the running-board waves at us... Slowly and reasuring.
Like a father seeing off his child on his first school outing.
A colourfull omen in radiant insouciance. Narritively speaking, this opening scene seems to stand apart from the subsequent scenes, which present a thriller full of suspense, violence and irony; usuallly a harrowing combination.

Thinking about the work of Wim Bosch, its not strange to invoke film.
In the filmtheatre a picture is projected onto a flat screen, also known as ‘the silver screen’. Admittedly, Wim Bosch’s canvasses do not carry any moving pictures, nevertheless the present themselves as flat screenes.
The artist admits a keen interest in the interaction between painting-as-window and painting-as-object which expresses itself in works that are both deceptively realistic vistas and three-dimensional objects, thanks to their monochromatically coloured sides which make the paintings ‘stand-free’ of the wall. Of these two aspects I believe that the concept of the painting-as-screen brings together the most rewarding set of meanings.

Offering a sample collection of Bosch’s work dating from the past few years, all ten paintings shown in this catalogue present a combination of words, the figurative and the abstract. Exteriors and townscapes as well as daily objects are framed or separated by blocks of colour.
In these areas are words, painted in a colour which is either lighter or darker than their background. Although no people are visible in the work-which is not to say that the environment is not inhabited- an almost grotesquely detailed hand, particulary on the most recent works, swoops into the picture from the frame, suggesting the almost tangible presence of the painter.

In the complex 1996 painting entitled “sounds that we...” the picture elements are interwoven with respect to content, composition and formal aspects. Two figurative situations occur. On the left-hand side is an area showing a yellow desk lamp against a dark background. The light is on and a forefinger of a hand touches a switch ever so lightly. The right-hand side of the canvas is dominated by a vista of a newly built housing estate.
We see a path of tiles hemmed in by two frehsly-stained green fences which runs underneath a block of houses and ends in a residential area immersed in sunlight. The bright backlighting is reflected by the tiles and the wood which blocks two rows of backgardens from view.
As regards composition these figurative areas are on equal footing with the monochromatic areas in light dark and blue. It seems as though a perpetual moment has frozen, because these square and rectangular areas present different layers of composition as they separate and frame one and another.
Moreover, these abstract areas form a refined colour combination highlighting the yellow of the lamp, the green of the fence, and the red of the bricks.
The painting is remarkably pleasant to look at.
In the colour areas fragments of texts can be read, such as “ sounds we heard at that...” and “ that it already had happened...”.
The four constituent elements of this picture (‘the lamp’. ‘the vista’, the coloured areas and the words) are placed both next to and on top of each other.
Hovering over the block of words, an abstract vertical beam crosses it.
Also, it provides such a powerfull echo to the poles supporting the fence, that it forces the words to enter the figurative element of the vista.
This infiltration is all the more powerful as the beam in which the words are set is adjacent to the concrete lintel in the wall of the house. Inversely, several figurative elements of the painting, such as the windows of the house and the oval mouth of the lamp are overexposed and therefore rendered as monochromatic areas, putting them on the same plain as the abstract elements.
Such a complexity in formal and compositional aspects seems to result from the use of a computer. Even if not, the visual impression that it leaves is that of a computerscreen.

The way in which paint is used adds to the impression of looking at a flatscreen. Although in hid recent work Bosch uses oilpaint, his canvasses are undentably ‘flat”. Seldom more then one layer of paint has been applied, nor are secondary colours shing through the top layer. Seen close-up , curved and shiny surfaces, such as the chrome rod of the desk light, look remarkably flat owing to the fact that colours suggets it curvature by beiing juxtaposed rather then bleeding into another.

Visual and textual elements of the painting are directly culled from a file that Bosch has compiled over the years. A great number of binders holds thematically categorised slides, whilst his computer holds a file of texts, all selfmade records of his habitat: suburbs, scens from the edge of the city, casual bits of conversation, objects of his own home, greenery. He strictly collects the casual and mundane.
For each painting, Bosch makes a selection by intuition from his stock images and texts. After an elaborate process of sketching he brings them together in a compostion on paper., which is then put onto canvas. The painting is, in fact , made of ‘samples’: fragments of imagery and words.
Their relationship is what constitutes a layer of meaning which is both incidental and intentional.
The above mentioned mention painting ‘sounds that we ...’ shows two sources of concentarted light: the desk lamp set against a dark background and the bright sunlight bursting into the alley. The words ‘sounds that we ...’ (heard at the time? AvR) link the purely visual sensations of light, overexposure and blinding with hearing. Together with what looks the switching on of a light the sentence creates a certain suspense.
A suggesion of a nightly wake (unrest, danger) lends an oppressive air to the residential area’s sun-kissed insoursiance. What goes on behind those windows veiled by light ?

Wim Bosch paints the outer layer of reality: the texture of a greenery, the rhythm of bricks, the sheen of various materials, the almost public conversations. Such a closed exterior does however, give rise to suspicions as to what goes on beneath the surface. Behind the casual screen lurks turmoil. In an idiom very much akin to that of David Lynch, Bosch paints a ‘guilty landscape in which at least the murder of James Bulger was brought to light.

Text for the catalogue: Skindeep,1996, Arno Van Roosmalen (curator Museum Boymans van Beuningen, Rotterdam until 1999)