Between Plants and People

Rune Bosse does not believe that the answers are to be found in a book theorizing the evolution of humankind; neither does he seek to establish a common discourse to agree upon. He is simply trying to create a space for people to ask questions about and reflect on their own being through bodily perceptions of nature. As when he placed five fully functional doors in different environments in the city and the countryside for a period of four weeks, drawing attention to the relationship between an object’s location and its function. How does ones perception and memory shape ones experience? Or when he, in an ongoing project, digs a hole in the ground in one country, collects a bit of soil and fill that into a hole in the next country he travels to, as a literal and symbolic act regarding exchanges of lived life. It is not a matter of highlighting borders, on the contrary, it is about emphasizing an equally interconnectedness.

In ideas and through doing, Rune Bosse dissolves the borders between art and life. For him, they are deeply interwoven, a part of the same whole, as is nature. Every step he takes potentially leads him to new knowledge. This elementary experience of our natural surroundings drives him forward. From his childhood adventures between the forest and the beach on Southern Zealand in Denmark to his educational footprints at Olafur Eliasson’s Institut für Raumexperimente in Berlin and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, along with all his travels around the world. Rune Bosse is a wanderer, moving through time and space with all his senses alert. Every place he visits arouses his awareness. From holes in the roads of Addis Ababa to the intimacy of his father’s house. Rather than being a mere observer, he interacts with the world. He is not afraid to touch, feel, grow, speak, move, connect. In his own words, he creates through embodied knowledge.

Rune Bosse finds himself in a constant exploration of time, growth, decay, and memory. From the observation of the green freshness of a blooming leaf in early spring to its brown fragility when it is about to fall from the tree, from becoming to perishing, and vice versa. In the piece Moments, he literally encapsulated moments in the form of plants, collected every day for a period of three months. The work consisted of 81 bottles, each with one bleached plant, representing a memory either to be remembered or to be forgotten.

As such, Rune Bosse bears a resemblance to a scientist, systematically and empirically exploring phenomena in nature. All at the same time, his practice reflects a poetic dimension expressing states of mind through art. Beyond any labels, but with one certain point of departure: the tangible world. For Rune Bosse, it is not about creating a gateway into a parallel world, offering a haven in the midst of the busy life of a world citizen in the 21th century. On the contrary, it is about something elementary: paying attention to the world right in front of us. The sky above. The soil below. The trees in between. Stop up, look closely and just be. Nature might have something important to tell you…

About Rune Bosse
Born in 1987. Lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark.
runebosse.com