Lehmann Maupin is pleased to present an installation of recent Hernan Bas paintings for TEFAF New York this spring. The works were produced specifically for the fair with the architectural and design elements of a Historic Room within Park Avenue Armory in mind. The gallery will exhibit in the Field and Staff room (104) within Park Avenue Armory, which contains some of the most significant historic interiors in the country. For the bespoke installation, Bas has taken cues from the taxidermy, intricate woodwork, and period elements of the room to create paintings that invite a contemporary dialogue with the historic environment.
Bas is best known for his paintings that combine abstract and figurative elements born of literary intrigue and tinged with nihilistic romanticism and old world imagery. Influenced by the Decadence art and literary movement of the 19th century, in particular Charles Baudelaire, Joris-Karl Huysman, Edgar Allen Poe, and Oscar Wilde, Bas’s paintings weave together fictional stories of adolescent adventures and the paranormal with classical poetry, religious stories, mythology, Art History, fairy tales, and contemporary T.V., movies, and comics. For this new body of work, Bas continues in this tradition with each painting focusing on a specific reference or theme, including one work in particular that resembles a contemporary and male version of Little Red Riding Hood.
About the artist
Hernan Bas (b. 1978 in Miami, Florida, lives and works in Miami and Detroit, MI) has received solo exhibitions organized by Centro De Arte Contemporáneo Málaga, Málaga, Spain (2018); Colby College Art Museum, Waterville, ME (2018); SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA (2017); Bass Museum of Art, Miami, FL (2013); and the Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL (2007). Bas has participated in a number of important group exhibitions, including The Collectors, curated by Elmgreen & Dragset for the Nordic and Danish Pavilions at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009); Triumph of Painting: Part III, Saatchi Gallery, London, and Ideal Worlds – New Romanticism in Contemporary Art, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (both 2005); and the 2004 Whitney Biennale. His work is part of the permanent collections of New York’s Brooklyn Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art; as well as the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.