Hernan Bas Born 1978 in Florida, Miami

Lives and works in Florida, Miami, US

Originally from Miami, Florida, Hernan Bas (b. 1978) now lives and works in Detroit and Miami. Hernan Bas is first and foremost a painter, even though he ventures also into the field of photography and film occasionally. By combining woodcut and linoleum print, airbrush or gold leaf with painting, Bas creates multilayered, densely textured works of art. Hernan Bas takes his inspiration from literature, history and contemporary culture, combining the themes of Arthur Rimbaud, Oscar Wilde and Robert Frost. Inspired by the aesthetics of the male androgynous dandy, Hernan Bas constructs narratives of adolescent exploration, that at times suggest themselves as metaphors for a sexual and sensual awakening. Usually portrayed alone amidst vast and sprawling natural surroundings, the pensive youths in Hernan Bas’s paintings reside in a utopian world of instinctive sensuality. Elements of theatricality appear again and again in his mid- and large-format paintings.

Hernan Bas studied at the New World School of the Arts in Miami. Hernan Bas has been presented in numerous exhibitions around the world. A monographic publication was published on the occassion of his solo show at the CAC, Centre de Arte Contemporaneo in Malaga (2018). The SCAD Museum, Savannah, Georgia held an impressive exhibition "Hernan Bas. Florida Living" curated by Storm Janse van Rensburg in 2017. A further important solo exhibition "The other side" was curated by René Zechlin (2012) at the Kunstverein Hannover. In 2016 Hernan Bas participated in the group exhibition "A sum of it's Parts" at the Polk Museum of Art in Lakeland, Florida. In 2015 he was part of the exhibition "Tracing Shadows" at the Samsung Museum, Seoul, South Korea. In 2014 a comprehensive anthology on Hernan Bas, with texts by Christian Rattermeyer and Jonathan Griffin, and an interview between Hernan Bas and Nancy Spector from the Guggenheim Museum, New York, was published by Rizzoli International Publications, New York. For the occasion of the exhibition "Hernan Bas - Bloomsbury revisited" (2017), Galerie Peter Kilchmann published a catalogue with illustrations and a cover designed by Hernan Bas.

Hernan Bas’ work is part of the following collections (selection): Brooklyn Museum; Carré d'Art - Musée d'Art Contemporain, Nîmes, France; Detroit, Institute of Arts; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Rubell Family Collection, Miami; Saatchi Collection, London, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and Samuso: Space for Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea.