Installation Shots From: Gaiety Is the Most Outstanding Feature of the Soviet Union
Installation Shots From: Gaiety Is the Most Outstanding Feature of the Soviet Union
Installation Shots From: Gaiety Is the Most Outstanding Feature of the Soviet Union
Installation Shots From: Gaiety Is the Most Outstanding Feature of the Soviet Union
Installation Shots From: Gaiety Is the Most Outstanding Feature of the Soviet Union

Hernan Bas

SELECTED WORKS BY Hernan Bas

Hernan Bas
Tapestry

2005

Carpet tapestry

222 x 434 cm

Hernan Bas' tapestry intricately weaves his subject of desire into an object of luxurious decadence. Drawing reference from the narrative regalia of medieval wall hangings, his carpet transfers the expressionist elegance of his paintings to stylised stitch work. Woven in bright colours, Bas’ mythological scene presents both a contemporary and timeless apotheosis. The acid hues and pixellated texture replicate the virtuality of television or digital imaging, while his antique process echoes the intimacy of heartfelt endeavour. In creating a functional object rather than a painterly illusion, Bas incorporates a more complex dimension to his opulent fantasies. His tapestry facilitates lifestyle embellishment and role-play fetishism.

ARTICLES

Go See – Paris: Hernan Bas at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin through March 13, 2010

Now showing at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris is a look at the Miami-based artist Hernan Bas, unprecedented in France. The exhibition, entitled “Considering Henry,” is on view through March 13, 2010 and borrows new works from major collections belonging to the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, MOCA (both Los Angeles and Miami), The Rubell Family Collection, The Saatchi Collection, SFMOMA and the Hirshhorn. Tracing prevalent themes of solitude and reflection in Bas’s romantically-inflected oeuvre, the exhibition follows the artist’s steadfast inspiration in nineteenth-century literature and painting.

A direct tribute to the philosopher Henry David Thoreau, “Considering Henry” traces Bas’s fascination with canonical Transcendentalist writing, including the quintessential Walden (1854), in which the author’s pivotal concept of civil disobedience is expounded. Giving voice to the individual’s voluntarily extrication from society and spiritual fulfillment in nature, works such as The landmark (or the laser point) depict a minuscule figure in an isolated dwelling space, decrying organized civilization for his lawless, stormy environment.

Dense in mythical and metaphorical content, The bagpiper in exile (or, the sad wind), for example, descends from Bas’s theoretical grounding in Classical painting and the French Romanticists, including Lautreamont and Huysmans.

In paintings recalling the Fauvist method and palette, Bas applies thick swatches of paint to his canvases via velvety, apparent brushstrokes. Interposing tiny figures between thick shoots of vegetative overgrowth, the painter portrays human organisms in densely populated natural wilderness. Serving as deferential meditations into man’s relationship with nature, Bas’s highly emotive paintings call for re-examinations of ourselves and basic necessities.

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Source:artobserved.com

Hernan Bas by Maurizio Cattelan, Flash art n. 268 October 2009

MAURIZIO CATTELAN: So, you’re in Detroit at the moment?

Hernan Bas: Yup, the house I bought up here is almost done. It’s been under renovation for almost a year and things are finally wrapping up. My future studio in the basement is three days from being finished and I’m feeling really anxious to start working again.

MC: I understand you’ve taken a little time off; is this why you feel nervous to start up again, to start from scratch, especially in a new city and a new studio as well?

HB: I haven’t painted in nearly a month, and it’s been a little odd. I had two solo shows this past spring/summer and they pretty much drained me, and after coming back from Venice I really needed a break. By the way, I threw out the much-discussed salami that you contributed to the catalogue/bag for Elmgreen & Dragset’s Danish and Nordic pavilions “The Collectors.” I packed at 7 am and didn’t want to deal with customs asking why a salami was so important. If that thing really becomes a collectable, I’m calling you for a replacement!

MC: It was just meant as a snack.

HB: I know! I actually really liked what you put in the pavilion itself though, the taxidermy dog [Untitled (2009).] I made a painting a while back called The Prude Listening to Love Songs (2006) that mimicked the same classic RCA Victrola phonograph advertisement. I’m guessing that is what you had in mind?

MC: Sure, sure… so do you have any plans for your next work? Are you reading/sketching? Being lazy and just thinking!? Tell me about how you work, how your paintings come about.

HB: Well, I’m a bit foggy right now, I’m starting my usual ‘research’ phase, meaning I read A LOT, I watch A LOT of movies I’ve been holding off on, and I get obsessively interested in new stories or tales I come across, fictional or true, it doesn’t matter, as well as particular artists who I might have ignored or been indifferent to before.

MC: Who do you mean?

HB: Well, I am looking at James Ensor right now, super freak of the 19th century, but
at the same time I am in love with Van Gogh. His drawings in particular are my favorites — he has such a skilful hand. I’m very jealous of it. At the same time, he’s such an artist myth, probably the greatest of them all. His story is so utterly romanticized and so completely bullshit, he must have known damn well he could paint. He was buddies with Gauguin, he was not just some outsider artist with a mental illness and, supposedly, one ear.

Read the entire article here
Source:flashartonline.com