Jacobson Howard Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition devoted to the work of Bram Bogart. The exhibition opens on September 11, 2008 and continues through October 11, 2008.
Bogart was born in 1921 in Delft, and lived variously in Paris, Rome, and Brussels. In the 1960’s he gained Belgium nationality and began what was to be the work that characterized his career. Throughout that career Bogart has been linked to such diverse groups and movements as Abstract Expressionism, Tachism/l’art informele, and Art Concrete.
The essence of Bram Bogart’s work lies in texture and composition. A brush, a trowel and a painter’s knife are the instruments used by the artist to make the matter move rhythmically. He works from above, with the canvas, which often weighs several hundred pounds, lying on the floor.
Bogart remains steadfast in his use of a singular painting technique and his focus on materiality and form may be especially significant for us today:
“Jean-Francois Lyotard, the author of ‘The Post-Modern Condition’, notes that the
knowledge gained through direct physical engagement, rather than through abstract
reasoning, takes on special significance in our age in which the immateriality of the
image world demeans embodied experiences. [Bogart’s work] reasserts painting’s
potential to open for us a space of speculation, intuition and analysis.”