Legend: Eating Colors and a Beautiful Insular Behind

"My Legend Paintings translate my concerns very directly. I make them in my mind and for every painting I make, I have at least ten sketches. The word "legend" can be used as a little recipe to read a map. So it has a very pragmatic meaning. But it also has this more suggestive, historical meaning. They suggest there is an underlying moralist notion. People need me to understand the work." Kasper Bosmans, 2024

Eat Colors and a Beautiful Insular Behind is a triptych from the Legend Paintings, a series of paintings on wood Kasper Bosmans started in 2014. The works bring together historical references and current socio-political issues. They are accompanied by short explanatory captions, which are left open to personal interpretation.

On the first panel, we see turtle shells and the buttocks of a man as if through binoculars. The image refers to the Hungarian paleontologist Franz Nopcsa, who discovered a new species of prehistoric turtle. He named the turtle "Kallokibotion Bajazidi" because it reminded him of the buttocks of his lover Bajazid Doda. The central panel depicts flowers, which refer to The Golden Donkey, a novel by Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis. In this story, a Greek student turns into a donkey and must eat roses to regain his human form. The fence is painted in the motley pattern of the costume of the Pied Piper, an enigmatic figure in medieval folklore. The third panel portrays a multitude of snail shells. They belong to the Polymita picta, also known as the Cuban painted snail. This species is famous for its unique shell variation, which protects it against natural predators. The vibrant shells are a prized target of poachers, who use them to make trinkets and souvenirs. Because of this, the painted snail has become an endangered species.