Go See: New Work by Hernan Bas at Lehmann Maupin, New York, through July 10, 2009
Lehmann Maupin's Chrystie Street location on the Lower East Side of Manhattan presents a new body of work by contemporary Miami-based painter Hernan Bas. This exhibition, entitled The Dance of the Machine Gun & other forms of unpopular expression after the "Futurist Manifesto" by Italian poet F.T. Marinetti, is his first solo show in four years and coincides with the artist's retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum, taken from the Rubell Collection of Miami.
Lehmann Maupin
Hernan Bas: The Dance of the Machine Gun & other forms of unpopular expression
201 Chrystie Street, New York
April 23 - July 10, 2009
In the new series, Bas continues to explore his fixation with fantasy and history, combining the supernatural with Romantic and Neo-Gothic traditions. He has moved away from the decadent dandies of earlier series towards "fertile landscapes populated with exotic creatures and waifish adventurers." And while Bas's signature dark, hedonistic narratives are present, the imagery is abstracted, especially in works like Mystery Bouf (or, the kingdom after the flood).
The influence of Marinetti, Italian editor and founder of the Futurist movement, is shared with Bas's appreciation for the absurdist theater of Alfred Jarry, specifically in the canvas Ubu Roi, in which Jarry's protagonist Ubu "leads a group of dancing followers through a scene reminiscent of Soviet Futurist stage design, flat cubist abstraction and the illustrated tales of Hans Christian Andersen." These paintings, all created on a grand scale, also create a visual dialogue among such widespread references as Dada, Surrealism, and early Russian theater.
The work of Hernan Bas is presently in private and public collections worldwide including the Rubell Collection, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others.