This work is sold as a set of 14, including 2 photographs.
Like a businessman dealing in art ideas, Boezem wore a three-piece suit and carried a briefcase with proposals for ‘Shows’ (1964-1969). He deliberately used an international term for the goods with which he travelled to museums and galleries.
Boezem offered ‘ideas’, not finished sculptures or paintings but proposals presented in a catalogue which were meant to be realised only if there proved to be a demand.
The proposals consisted of spatial sculptures made of air and other materials, such as cotton, wool and reeds, hardly ever used for art, for example a museum room furnished with flapping cutains as wind sculptures and warm air flows generated by fans.
This extensive series made use of the fact that a museum room or gallery, as a so-called neutral space, a white cube, automatically confers credibility on the art in that setting. The proposals drawn with a felt-tip pen as simple, unpretentious thoughts for exhibitions based on concepts, are far ahead of their time.
The Shows were proposals for what became known in the second half of the eighties as ‘installations’: working with the whole of the exhibition space. The space, the architecture and the function and meaning of the location are all involved. An art object is not presented as an isolated artefact placed in a room, possibly without the involvement of the maker. Rather, with this method the artist intervenes spatially and figuratively through a visual commentary. The unique, temporary situation thus created can prompt a discussion of the aesthetics (form) and function (content) of spaces where art is presented.
The Shows form a coherent series of drawings, intended as proposals for installations which could be realized in a museum on order. The appearance is reminiscent of the neutrality of architectural drawings, with a frame at the bottom in which the necessary information is given. A typed explanation accompanies a number of the drawings.
The drawings are stenciled in editions, and separately, or sometimes for several shows together, were sent to persons in art circles. Typed instructions were enclosed with the drawings. The Shows are numbered I through XV; XIII is absent. The first Show comprised of 13 drawings, and was only later regarded as Show I. For Show VI only a typed instruction exists. A number of the Shows were realised partially, or in full. The format of the drawings is 32 x 22 cm. The drawings for Show I differ in size from the others. The drawings are treated as autonomous work.
In addition to these Shows, there exist a number of working drawings that are not officially denoted as Shows, but do display the same characteristics and are reckoned among the Shows. The Shows, deliberately drawn in a non-artistic manner, strongly resemble Henk Peeters’ draft sketches for exhibition projects. In terms on mentality, the presentation of the new artistic notions parallels the manner of working of Pieter Engels, who through his Engels Product Organization (EPO), founded in 1964, promoted his artworks as though they were commerical products. In the same way, Boezem called his works Shows. There are four photographs preserved from this period in which Boezem poses as a travelling salesman, with his sample case, in which he had stowed away his Shows.