about: (nederlands)

In the years after graduating in painting from the Art Academy Minerva in Groningen, photography came
to play an increasingly important role in the oeuvre of Wim Bosch, and from 2000 onwards, he has
only produced works he considers to be strictly 'photographic'. The material for his digital photocollages
is drawn from his own collection of photographs of façades, furniture, plants or landscapes, as well as from
a store of vernacular pictures of people, animals and objects found on the internet.
Starting point for a work can be a certain idea or a given situation, but it can also be engendered
by a single intruiging image of a gesture, an aquarium, a certain hair do or an architectural ornament.

Like in painting, his point of departure is the white space, on which he then slowly constructs everything,
interacting with and responding to the alterations he continually makes to his digital image file.
In this manner, the work evolves in perpetual metamorphosis towards an end result that might not even
expose the initial point of departure. By bringing together photographic recordings of actual places,
captured at separate moments, Bosch creates a fictional moment in time, the existence of which is decided
by one command of the imaging software, which forges all separate layers into an inseparable new entity.
Only then the actual photograph is 'made', with its own set of uniquely created pixels.

Initially his work presented spaces that could be virtually entered and explored. Over time, the definition of
these spaces has become more and more complex. Barriers were erected for the viewer, in the shape of net curtains,
window frames, reflections, or shrubbery. The boundaries between inside and outside, as well as between person
and thing have become fluid, diffused. Bosch's most recent series manifest a baroque mood, which,
through the application of a particular mix of light, color and texture, becomes desorienting, almost oppressive.
His photographs, even though they are produced digitally, maintain a certain naturalness, because they are
nowhere perfect or polished, often looking gritty, with left over pixels scattered over the surface of the image.

The world he invokes appears curiously flat, although overlappings and reflections add an indefinite sense of depth.
A similarly ambiguity is found in his use of pictorial elements, such as a door ajar, a flower, or a bird, which
reference symbolist traditions.
The suggestion that these symbols actually signify something, is only partly kept or not at alll through the changed
context in which these elements now appear. Clear-cut statements are not what Wim Bosch's photographic works
set out to deliver. Instead, they confront us with what waits to be deciphered. In that sense, his work speaks
of our unremitting attempts to get a grip on the reality we find ourselves immersed in.