Kasper Bosmans: The Fuzzy Gaze

About

Kasper Bosmans’ practice combines sculpture, installation, painting and drawing. His works are complex compositions teeming with references from high art, literature, folk or pop culture, heraldry, mythology and anthropology, which the artist addresses through a playful, queer approach that observes and reinvents narratives from the world around us. Bosmans gathers anecdotes and stories, from different cultures and societies, identifying unusual, idiosyncratic practices and rituals. He translates them through a contemporary lens, while drawing our attention to the remnants of local traditions and mythological iconography in contemporary life.

Kasper Bosman’s new commission for EMΣΤ, Τhe Fuzzy Gaze (2025), examines the shifting roles animals have occupied in the human world over time. This large-scale mural loosely investigates the history and development of the animal-human gaze in the shape of a procession. Ιt highlights the various roles we assign to animals; companions, entertainers and commodities shaped to serve our desire for utility, spectacle, or comfort. Horses, teddy bears, dissected frogs, and feline eyes appear in scenes ranging from the household to the circus. Evocative and rebus-like, they reveal minute zoological details and fragments of regional lore, layering local specificity with universal resonance. The work re-creates the feeling of walking through a zoo, caught in the unblinking stare of beasts, or seated in a circus, where trained gestures and rehearsed mannerisms flicker by, rapid and dazzling.

Heraldic stylization and the use of the caparison – an ornamental covering spread over a horse’s saddle or harness -is a recurring reference of one form of the aesthetic commodification of animals by humans in European history; one might also notice the glazed-over eyes and boredom in a variety of artificial man-made contexts, specifically designed enclosures for animals: the zoo, the circus, the farm.

The work has been commissioned for the exhibition Why Look at Animals? A Case for the Rights of Non-Human Lives, at EMΣT, 15 May 2025 – 15 February 2026.

BIOGRAPHY

Kasper Bosmans (b. 1990, Lommel, Belgium) studied in Belgium at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and did his Master’s Degree at HISK – Higher Institute of Fine Arts in Ghent.

Solo exhibitions (selection): Mutualism, Delvaux, Paris; Collection Display: Kasper Bosmans, De Pont Museum, Tilburg, Netherlands (2023); Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht, Husbandry, WIELS, Brussels (2022); Wolf Corridor, De Pont Museum, Tilburg, Netherlands; A Perfect Shop-front, Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan (2021); Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York (2020 & 2018); Das Verflixte 7. Jahr, Fuerstenberg Zeitgenossich, Donaueschingen, Germany (2018); The Words and Days, De Hallen, Haarlem, The Netherlands (2017); Specimen Days, S.M.A.K. Museum of Contemporary Art, Ghent, Witte de With, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; Cintamani Weavings, Centrale for Contemporary Art, Brussels (2016).

Group exhibitions (selection): 9th Biennial of Painting, Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium; After Paradise, Triennale Kortrijk, Belgium (2024); 40th EVA International, Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art, Limerick, Ireland, Dhaka Art Summit, Dhaka, Bangladesh; Imaginary Friends, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona (2023); Barbe à Papa, CAPC Musée d’art Contemporain de Bordeaux, Bordeaux (2022); I Think I Look More like the Chrysler Building, De Vleeshal, Middelburg, Netherlands (2021); The Penumbral Age: Art in the Time of Planetary Change, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, In the Presence of Absence: Proposals for the Museum Collection, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Together, M HKA Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen, Germany (2020); Blood and Soil: Dark Arts for Dark Times, Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithuania; Future Generation Art Prize @ Venice 2019, Palazzo Ca’ Tron, Venice; Future Generation Art Prize, Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev; Young Artists in Europe: Metamorphosis, Fondation Cartier, Paris (2019); Stories of Almost Everyone, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2018); Kathmandu Triennale 2017, Maligaun, Kathmandu, Nepal; Drawing Biennial, Drawing Room, London (2017).