Ghosts

In her latest series, Ariane Bosquet uses ‘vestiges’ other than those we are familiar with for the first time. These are scraps of paper revealing images taken from old magazines from the beginning of the century.

She emphasises their ancient nature and then fixes them onto a rigid base, inserting them into a monochrome background drawn with a thick watercolour pencil or brush, enhanced with collages. The overflowing lines reinforce the brutalist appearance of the compositions.

Ariane Bosquet thus moves somewhat away from pure abstraction, the dominant feature of her work until now.  Are these ‘composite remains’ ghostly figures whose faces are as present in their material substance as they are absent in their elusive contours (‘ghosts’)?
Abandoned ruins? Steep walls or paths leading nowhere? Gnarled trees with branches that have no beginning and no end? Human forms?

The masses, as if partitioned in shades of grey, bistre, bitumen black or anthracite, speak to us sometimes of confinement, sometimes of erratic turmoil or muffled anxieties.

Michel Van Lierde
November 2024

© Ariane Bosquet 2025