SHOW
MUST GO ON

A SERIES OF
ENCRYPTED PAINTINGS
BY JEAN-CLAUDE BOSSEL

Current exhibition
painting no. 07
*80 × 40 cm*

HOW THis SERIES
BEGAN

Let’s start with a personal memory.

The COVID pandemic made 2020–2021 a difficult time for everyone, including artists and galleries.

For months, we wondered whether we could keep our large studio, showroom and gallery in the industrial district of Préverenges. With restrictions on gatherings, we could no longer welcome the public to the space.

Should we carry on? Wait? Give up? Rethink what we were doing?

We kept creating.

The show had to go on.

show must
go on

The series takes its title from Queen’s “The Show Must Go On” and pays tribute to Freddie Mercury.

Queen recorded The Show Must Go On at Mountain Studios in Montreux, on the shores of Lake Geneva, not far from our studio in Préverenges.

The song was released in 1991, shortly before Mercury’s death.

TWO NUMBER SYSTEMS
IN THIS PAINTING

Paintings from the SHOW MUST GO ON series use two number systems to encrypt messages.

The holes on the left represent digits in base 4, while those on the right represent digits in base 2.

On the left, the holes are arranged vertically in sequences of three. They come in four diameters, which represent the digits 0, 1, 2 and 3 in order from smallest to largest.

On the right, a small square is attached to the main canvas. Its holes are arranged vertically in sequences of five and come in two diameters. The smaller holes represent 0 and the larger ones represent 1.

ART &
MATHEMATICS

Before painting, Jean-Claude Bossel used the CODE BACH® process to work out which hole sizes to use on the left side of the canvas.

He first converted the chosen messages into sequences of digits in base 4. He then encrypted these sequences through further calculations. The encrypted digits were finally represented on the canvas by holes of four different diameters.

The painting also
pays tribute to
Serge Gainsbourg

Serge Gainsbourg died in 1991, as did Freddie Mercury.

The message encrypted in this painting includes excerpts from the refrain of Serge Gainsbourg’s Le Poinçonneur des Lilas.

The song’s repeated reference to “little holes” echoes the holes that encode the words in the painting:

Des p’tits trous, des p’tits trous,
Encore des p’tits trous,

Des p’tits trous, des p’tits trous,
Toujours des p’tits trous.

English translation:

Little holes, little holes,
More little holes,

Little holes, little holes,
Always little holes.

COLOUR
Variations

Jean-Claude Bossel painted nine works in the SHOW MUST GO ON series in 2021.

He worked in yellow, red and blue, using three formats measuring 60 x 30 cm, 80 x 40 cm and 100 x 50 cm.

BLUE
VARIATION

RED
VARIATION

SOMETIMES YOU HAVE
TO KEEP GOING
SOMETIMES TO STOP

SHOW MUST GO ON is above all a state of mind.

In 2020–2021, we felt that the best thing we could do was to keep creating, despite the obstacles.

Sometimes you have to stop to make a fresh start.

That was the case for us in 2025–2026, when we rethought how the studio and gallery worked together.

After years of running a 2,000 m² studio and showroom, we opted for a smaller, more flexible setup with an international outlook.

game
over

That change of direction took shape in GAME OVER, a series of paintings completed in January 2026, just days before we closed our former studio and showroom.