Richard Bosman

Richard Bosman presents a somewhat similar problem. Another painter who looked hot when he first appeared, Bosman has so far been unable to develop his starting position into anything more substantial than a good beginning. He has fallen victim to that familiar syndrome: one big hit followed by too many, too similar remakes. Three years ago the corny violence he favored in both image and handling seemed timely, exactly keyed to pressing issues centering on the debate about appropriation (itself suffering from a repeater problem). For a while Bosman, like the Berlin painters, seemed to be concerned with intervening in that debate. His use of comic-book pictures and a patently borrowed, authentically inauthentic painting style placed him firmly within the “pseudo” rather than “neo” camp. The paintings looked highly romantic yet cynical. The stories they told, too-familiar melodramas of love,

— Thomas Lawson