Hernan Bas (USA, 1978)

– schildert in een expressieve, ‘vette’ stijl narratieve taferelen (zowel sprookjes als mythen). Daarnaast maakte hij een film met zichzelf als ‘koning’ op de vijver in Monet’s tuin in Giverny

Kort cv
Hernan Bas volgde zijn opleiding aan de New World School of the Arts in Miami en nam deel aan belangrijke tentoonstellingen zoals de Whitney Biennale New York, 2004 en The Triumph of Painting in de Londense Saatchi Gallery. Zijn werk wordt wereldwijd getoond en verzameld door musea als het MoMa New York en het Francisco Museum of Art.

Opleiding
New World School of the Arts, Miami

Recente tentoonstellingen
2009 Hernan Bas, Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York (solo)
2009 Hernan Bas: Works from the Rubell Family Collection, Brooklyn Art Museum, New York (solo)
2008 Ask the Sky, Sandroni Rey, Los Angeles
2008 6th Busan Biennale, Korea

Werk in de tentoonstelling

1. A Fairy’s Tale (2005)
   dimensions variable, two DVD projections and one stereo soundtrack, Edition of 10, Rubell Family Collection, Miami, courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery New York

Fragment catalogustekst (Robbert Roos)
Hernan Bas bouwt zijn weelderig geschilderde figuratie op als een 'klassiek' historiestuk. De visuele bombast zorgt voor een verbeelding rijk aan associaties, met een sterke romantische ondertoon. Niet de serene, reflectieve romantiek van de 'zware' Duitse schilders van de achttiende eeuw, maar de wulpse romantiek van Fragonard en Boucher zijn hierbij het ijkpunt. Mythische verhalen en sprookjesachtige scènes vermengt Bas met een eigentijds dandyisme, vol homo-erotische connotaties. In zijn videowerk is Bas veel soberder. Als een prins - met papieren kroon - zwerft hij in een boot door Monet's epische tuin in Giverny. Dan krijgt zijn werk ineens wel een melancholische ondertoon. En blijkt die toon ook wel degelijk in zijn geschilderde sprookjeswereld te sluimeren, al is het meer verborgen in de rijke schildertoets.

Aanvullende informatie
(2) Hernan Bas explores the language of dandyism and subculture as a means to define sexual attraction. Bas's paintings are tinged with nihilist romanticism, born of literary intrigue and a passion for historical painting. His works are small, frail and sensuously delightful. Through their unassuming intimacy, they contrive elaborate fantasies concerned with the ephemera and gentilities of seduction. Bas's bittersweet subject matter ranges from Greek mythology to contemporary genre painting, and are always derived from his connoisseur's predilection for the poetic and empyreal. Suggestive of the melodramatic narratives of classic film, his scenes conjure up thoughts of gothic malaise and the trepidation of first love.
Bas situates his characters amidst the turbulence of adolescence. Their sensuality is expressed through an aura of naive, emanating from scenes of roughhouse play or quiet repose. Bas portrays emotional isolation as a symptom of social engagement, a reflection of the awkwardness of budding sexuality and an awareness of difference. Bas' paintings are never explicit; rather his dreamy images exist as metaphors for emotional flux. Wavering between virginal anxiety and gushy infatuation, they capture precise moments of seasonal youth.
Greatly influenced and inspired by the decadent writing of Wilde and Huysmans, his style of painting emulates linguistic flourish. Impassioned brushwork and pastel hues bloom with poetic description, whilst environments are set with the divine ambience of pathetic fallacy. Confined by a historical sense of etiquette, Bas’ figures gracefully allude to darker inclinations; their posed innocence a thin veil of gentlemanly decorum.
Embracing the sentimental, Bas’ figures convey overwhelming emotions as an internalised sensation. Bas masterfully portrays the graceful masking of social gaff, the lustful harbouring of desire, or the stiff-lipped retention of hurt feelings. Through refined skill of drawing and measured composition, Bas develops a psychologically charged context for painting where dramatic excess knows no bounds.

(3) The figures in Hernan Bas' paintings are charged with potential. Captured at various thresholds - between youth and adulthood, innocence and experience, public and private realms - and situated within a shifting terrain of interior and exterior spaces that bring to mind poles of intellect and physicality, the androgynous boys in these paintings engage in rituals of courtship, love and death that seem to be based on a theatrical exaggeration of emotion. The construction of identity and dispersal of meaning are rendered thematically and pictorially fraught. Bas embellishes and destabilises as he describes, his brushwork often threatening to engulf, his colours edging towards over-ripe or chemical hues suggestive of transformation or intoxication.
Clearly there are literary precursors at play - in particular the Decadent writings of Joris-Karl Huysmans and Oscar Wilde are evoked. There's also a keen sense both of the pleasures and the limits of a queer vocabulary which, often thought of as demarcating a space of resistance through the awareness of double meanings and the construction of codes, is unlocked by Bas to welcome major motifs from the art historical canon. Reclaiming some of art's grand themes and spotlighting the degree of role-play that necessarily accompanies any new interpretation, Bas invites us to revel in a liberating sense of flux that, as much as it applies to the nascent identity of the youths he paints, alludes to the creative act itself.

Links en verwijzingen

1. www.lehmannmaupin.com
Op deze site is, naast vele schilderijen ook videowerk én een filmpje te zien waarop Bas wordt geïnterviewd
2. www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/hernan_bas.htm
3. www.victoria-miro.com/artists/_3/
4. www.bombsite.com/issues/88/articles/2654
5. http://wetheatproject.blogspot.com/2008/06/hernan-bas-profile-now-in-production.html
   Verschillende korte filmpjes, waaronder een interview met de kunstenaar, maar ook met curatoren, verzamelaars etc. over Bas