Couple 1998

Alexander Bogen made this painting, Couple, using oil paint, and I think it really shows us the joy in the process. It's a process of finding and of making. See how he's applied the paint so thickly, you can almost feel the texture with your eyes. The colors are bold and unapologetic, a mix of cool blues and vibrant reds that somehow just work. Look at the way the figures are outlined, not with clean lines, but with these broken, gestural marks. It's like he's building the forms right in front of us. It reminds me of de Kooning, the way he never seemed to quite finish a figure, always leaving it open for possibilities. And that blue, that saturated background, it's not just a backdrop. It's a space where these figures exist, where they breathe and interact. Bogen invites us to see the world not as a fixed reality, but as something fluid and always in the making.