Hernan Bas (American, b. 1978) An Aversion to Arrows (Tunnel of Love), Signed
Hernan Bas (American, b. 1978) An Aversion to Arrows (Tunnel of Love), Signed
Exhibition poster, produced by Perrotin, 2020
Offset print
Signed and numbered by the artist, #94/100
70 x 50 cm | 27.5 x 19.6 in
Hernan Bas’s expressionist and highly detailed figurative paintings are openly inspired by late-nineteenth-century decadent art and literature, as well as the concurrent symbolist and decorative style of the French group Les Nabis. Though aesthetically grounded in the iconography of the male androgynous dandy, the young protagonists of his oneiric visions are usually portrayed alone or in small groups, in attitudes of pure flânerie. Whether confined to the intimacy of a genre scene or lost in the vertigo of a dense, lush, romantic landscape, they inhabit a fantasized world of implicit eroticism and ambiguous sensuality. Always appearing as if suspended in time, between adolescence and adulthood, they embody a fragile in-between state that the artist refers to as “fag limbo.” With a flamboyant palette and a refined touch, Bas revisits and reinterprets, in masterly fashion, the various categories of classical painting from a homoerotic perspective that is seemingly melancholic yet often humorous and witty.
Hernan Bas (American, b. 1978) An Aversion to Arrows (Tunnel of Love), Signed
Exhibition poster, produced by Perrotin, 2020
Offset print
Signed and numbered by the artist, #94/100
70 x 50 cm | 27.5 x 19.6 in
Hernan Bas’s expressionist and highly detailed figurative paintings are openly inspired by late-nineteenth-century decadent art and literature, as well as the concurrent symbolist and decorative style of the French group Les Nabis. Though aesthetically grounded in the iconography of the male androgynous dandy, the young protagonists of his oneiric visions are usually portrayed alone or in small groups, in attitudes of pure flânerie. Whether confined to the intimacy of a genre scene or lost in the vertigo of a dense, lush, romantic landscape, they inhabit a fantasized world of implicit eroticism and ambiguous sensuality. Always appearing as if suspended in time, between adolescence and adulthood, they embody a fragile in-between state that the artist refers to as “fag limbo.” With a flamboyant palette and a refined touch, Bas revisits and reinterprets, in masterly fashion, the various categories of classical painting from a homoerotic perspective that is seemingly melancholic yet often humorous and witty.
Hernan Bas (American, b. 1978) An Aversion to Arrows (Tunnel of Love), Signed
Exhibition poster, produced by Perrotin, 2020
Offset print
Signed and numbered by the artist, #94/100
70 x 50 cm | 27.5 x 19.6 in
Hernan Bas’s expressionist and highly detailed figurative paintings are openly inspired by late-nineteenth-century decadent art and literature, as well as the concurrent symbolist and decorative style of the French group Les Nabis. Though aesthetically grounded in the iconography of the male androgynous dandy, the young protagonists of his oneiric visions are usually portrayed alone or in small groups, in attitudes of pure flânerie. Whether confined to the intimacy of a genre scene or lost in the vertigo of a dense, lush, romantic landscape, they inhabit a fantasized world of implicit eroticism and ambiguous sensuality. Always appearing as if suspended in time, between adolescence and adulthood, they embody a fragile in-between state that the artist refers to as “fag limbo.” With a flamboyant palette and a refined touch, Bas revisits and reinterprets, in masterly fashion, the various categories of classical painting from a homoerotic perspective that is seemingly melancholic yet often humorous and witty.
