The Brooklyn Rail

In his exhibition SHIPPING at Headstone Gallery, Richard Bosman represents the most ubiquitous thing we experience as consumers: packaging. However, Bosman’s deadpan representations have a nautical tinge, directing our attention to global trade networks and the shipping containers that transport our goods. It is a reality of life few of us consider. SHIPPING is not so much a social commentary as it is a reflection on the uneasiness of these phenomena, their place in our lives, and what we choose to see.

Entering the gallery, one encounters a series of trompe-l’oeil paintings that mimic the appearance of cardboard containers, specifically those that carry fruit and other perishable goods. These paintings of cardboard boxes are painted on actual cardboard material, adding to the work’s deadpan delivery. What I liked most about these paintings is how the crudeness of the cardboard is set against the tenderness of Bosman’s paint handling. Superficially, the paint application also appears crude, and one might argue that there isn’t ultimately much of a difference, but Bosman’s painting style appears simplistic or naive only at first glance. Stay longer and you will see the poetry of his simple maneuvers.

Product of Mexico (2025) depicts one side of a box packed with avocados. The company name “Promega” is printed at its center with a charming illustration of green avocados alongside it. The long, horizontal composition is stable and plain, and its blue, green, and yellow color scheme is pleasing to the eye. These are qualities belonging to the original packaging design, but they are also qualities Bosman has noticed and decided to translate into his painterly reproduction. Bosman also includes the imperfections of his subject. I spent a long time staring at the upper right corner of the avocado box where the edge lifts slightly, creating a strange distortion in space. The imperfection gives the composition a satisfying asymmetry, but also hints at a narrative. These packages go on long journeys, protecting our goods and getting beat up in the process; this is a process we are largely disconnected from.

While looking at Bosman’s paintings, I couldn’t ignore fruit’s history as a potent, enduring metaphor for desire. I found myself recalling the biblical story of Eve, who ate the forbidden fruit after Satan promised her eternal knowledge, a transgression that cast her and Adam out of Eden and branded humans with original sin. 

Less potent but no less poignant are Bosman’s trompe-l’oeil paintings of Amazon packages. Admittedly, I did not have as much enthusiasm for these works as for those discussed above. To me they felt heavy-handed and lacking in sensitivity. However, Bosman has honed a painting style over many decades that could be classified as “bad painting,” a phrase critic Marcia Tucker coined in 1978 to describe the work of artists who intentionally use amateurish techniques in order to challenge established tastes and question the role artistic refinement plays in the notion of progress. I think many would agree that the ubiquity of the Amazon package is an unfortunate reality of our time. Perhaps my disdain for this fact was, in part, what kept me from enjoying the paintings. But ultimately, the works did not reach me, and maybe that was the point: to make paintings worthy of their subject.

In the far corner of the gallery are three unassuming paintings of container ships floating alone in the middle of the ocean. The sky in Tanker (2025) is painted a lovely grey-green, pairing effectively with the ship’s deep red hull. The blue ocean is a solid mass, almost flat, and the subtle shadow across the vessel’s hull gives the ship a slight roundness which I found alluring. It’s hard not to personify these ships: each one feels like a modest portrait. I felt sad for these buoyant vessels which spend their lives away from shore, carrying goods from one part of the globe to another before being run aground and dismantled for scrap. The press release makes note of the fact that Bosman’s father was a seaman, a connection that has inspired nautical subjects throughout Bosman’s whole career. This biographical note left me wondering how much of this exhibition is social commentary and how much is a genuine reflection on the artist’s relationship with his father—albeit at a slant.

For me, the best paintings in this show were the ones that balanced opposing forces and found harmony in contradiction. When Bosman teases out the seductive qualities of fruit boxes, paints Amazon packages with justified ugliness, or treats massive ships with the tenderness due a loved one, he allows us to truly see the overlooked objects that furnish our day-to-day existence.