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Articles about Hernan Bas

Not Will and Grace

Hernan Bas at Daniel Reich Gallery By Dan Tranberg

Twenty-four-year-old Miami-based artist Hernan Bas is one of a growing number of emerging artists who makes figurative paintings a la Henry Darger, working in an awkward painterly style that blatantly favors psychologically rich narratives over technical mastery. But unlike his stylistic counterparts (Elizabeth Peyton, for instance) Bas delves into a highly charged social landscape, one occupied over the past decade or two by writers such as Dennis Cooper and filmmakers such as Gregg Araki. Bas himself cites earlier references: Oscar Wilde and French novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans. Either way, he uses his work to wrestle with a seemingly unavoidable queer pedigree.

His recent solo show at Daniel Reich Gallery, Sometimes with One I Love, offered a dozen recent works in which slender teenaged boys hover in a state between connection to and alienation from their environments. Fitting In, a 31 x 24-inch painting on wood panel, was a clear standout. A solitary figure stands in a shallow pool of water, mimicking the pose of a flamingo while a large group of the flamboyant pink birds carry on without noticing him. As with many of Bas' works, the boy's surroundings can be seen as a stand-in for a conventional social network, one with which the boy may want to blend, but obviously can't. Right Place Wrong Time uses a similar strategy; a boy shows up at a secluded rocky beach, only to be left alone standing in the rain, holding a red umbrella.

Such a sense of alienation and frustration is in many ways glamorized by Bas. Confused and depressed as his characters often seem, they also imply a certain cool detachment from the increasingly mainstream world of gay assimilation. In this sense, Bas revels in the psychological ambiguity that arises from not belonging to the relatively new world of gay normalcy.
Read the entire article Source: (www.anglemagazine.org)

Ignore Magazine get up close and personal with Hernan Bas

By Omar Sommereyns

Miami, Florida - Inside Hernan Bas' room in a pleasant apartment on Biscayne Boulevard, an absurd mass of empty Budweiser tallboys - accumulated over several days - stand below an old Trinitron TV. We were supposed to go to South Beach modspot, the Marlin Bar, for 2-for-1s, but instead, Bas is seated on his bed, fanning his tears as he watches the end of The Sixth Sense.

On the walls are posters of effeminate male models, artist Joseph Beuys and an exhibit called Domestic Porn ; record covers of Pat Benatar's Invincible and A-Ha's Take on Me; and postings of work that will be shown at his debut solo show in New York (mawkishly titled My Incommunicable Woe ) at the Daniel Reich Gallery. It is the beginning of the summer in 2004 and Bas has enjoyed a good deal of success and attention while still wallowing in youth.

There are also large transfers of gravestone surfaces that he rubbed on paper during a visit to historic cemeteries in New Orleans. He says he likes the aesthetic of the graves, their history and the fact that they describe the cause of death. Bas, whose parents are both Cuban, is a dark romantic and is drawn to the myth of the artist as martyr - the "tormented soul,' so to speak, who lives fast, produces much and dies young (27 still being the ripe taboo age). While in London for a 2004 group show at the Victoria Miro Gallery, he mentions, the large red buses roaring past him were intimidating, swerving close enough to knock him down.

Death is beautiful - in art. It's a hauntingly perfect concept, the only absolute truth. And it's a notion that's at the basis of Bas' work, something he handles openly and imaginatively, tongue leisurely rested in cheek.
Read the entire article Source: (ignoremagazine.com)

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Other artists in The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today Jaishri Abichandani | Mansoor Ali | Kriti Arora | Ajit Chauhan | Shezad Dawood | Atul Dodiya | Chitra Ganesh | Probir Gupta | Sakshi Gupta | Subodh Gupta | Tushar Joag | Jitish Kallat | Reena Saini Kallat | Bharti Kher | Rajan Krishnan | Huma Mulji | Pushpamala N | Yamini Nayar | Justin Ponmany | Rajesh Ram | Rashid Rana | T.V. Santhosh | Schandra Singh | Tallur L.N | Hema Upadhyay | T Venkanna |

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