Hernan Bas
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AboutConceptual Artist #7 (A Warhol enthusiast, his 26th studio mate completes the story), 2022
Hernan Bas is celebrated for works that, permeated by an aura of eroticism and decadence and loaded with codes and double-meanings, point to the intricacies of self-identity while celebrating moments of transformation: the ordinary becoming extraordinary.
Inspired by late-nineteenth-century decadent art and literature, as well as concurrent movements in the visual arts, earlier paintings by the artist hinge on characters captured at various thresholds – between youth and adulthood, innocence and experience, public and private realms. Situated within a shifting terrain of interior and exterior spaces, these paintings are often grounded in the iconography of the flâneur and the dandy, usually portrayed alone or in small groups, and marry flamboyant subject matter with a refined touch to reinterpret various categories of classical painting from a Queer perspective. More recently, in his acclaimed series The Conceptualists, Bas followed a new theme, in which his protagonists engage in a variety of obsessive pursuits that, deemed strange under everyday circumstances, might be rationalised or even championed when considered as ‘conceptual art’.
Bas’ paintings often appear as if suspended in time. However, the stillness at the heart of his work is one of calculated ambiguity, held in counterpoint to the transportive effects – of literature, beauty, the supernatural – experienced by his subjects and, by proxy, us as viewers.
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Selected Works
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BiographyConceptual Artist #7 (A Warhol enthusiast, his 26th studio mate completes the story), 2022
Hernan Bas, born in Miami, Florida in 1978, lives and works in Miami, Florida.
The artist’s recent solo institutional exhibitions include Hernan Bas: The Conceptualists, The Bass Museum of Art, Miami, USA (2023); Hernan Bas: Choose Your Own Adventure, Space K, Seoul, South Korea; Yuz Museum, West Bund, Shanghai, China (2021–22); Hernan Bas, Rubell Museum, Miami, USA (2020–22); Hernan Bas: A Brief Intermission, CAC Málaga, Spain (2018) and Florida Living, staged at the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah in 2017.
In 2012 Bas opened The Other Side at the Kunstverein Hannover, the artist's first institutional solo show within Europe. A major survey of the artist's work previously opened at the Rubell Family Collection, Miami, in 2007 and toured to the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 2009.
Other significant exhibitions include Hernan Bas: The Space Between Needful & Needless, Lehmann Maupin Seoul, South Korea (2025); Hernan Bas: Nightmares & Melancholy, Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich, Switzerland (2024); Hernan Bas: The First and the Last, Galerie Perrotin, Paris, France (2024); Hernan Bas: The Conceptualists: Vol. II, Lehmann Maupin, New York, USA (2023); Hernan Bas: The Conceptualists, Victoria Miro, London, UK (2022); Hernan Bas: Nightlite, Fredric Snitzer, Miami, USA (2021); Hernan Bas, Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich, Switzerland (2020); Hernan Bas: Venetian Blind, Victoria Miro, Venice, Italy (2020); Them, Galerie Perrotin, New York, USA (2019); Works on Paper, Galleri Bo Bjerggaard, Copenhagen, Denmark (2019); Time Life, Lehmann Maupin, New York, USA (2019); On the Horizon: Contemporary Cuban Art from the Jorge M Pérez Collection, Pérez Art Museum, Miami (2017); A Sum of its Parts, Polk Museum of Art, Florida (2016); Tracing Shadows, Plateau, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul (2015); Aquatopia, The Imaginary of the Ocean Deep, at Nottingham Contemporary and subsequently travelling to Tate St. Ives (2013–14); TIME, Bass Museum of Art, Miami (2013); Nightfall, MODEM Centre for Contemporary Art, Hungary, travelling to Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague (2012); Contemporary Magic: A Tarot Deck Art Project, Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh (2011); Nothing in the World But Youth, Turner Contemporary, Margate (2011); Busan Biennale, Korea (2008); Like Color in Pictures, Aspen Art Museum (2007); Ideal Worlds - New Romanticism in Contemporary Art, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2005); Whitney Biennial (2004); and The Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (2002). Bas’ work was also included in The Collectors, conceived by Elmgreen & Dragset for the Nordic and Danish Pavilions, Venice Biennale (2009).
Works by the artist are included in the collections of Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; Detroit Institute of Arts; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.
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News
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Victoria Miro at Frieze Los Angeles with a solo presentation by Hernan Bas
February 27, 2024Bas creates works that serve up a heady concoction of glamour, wit, bohemian sophistication and (in echoes at least) transgression. They pivot around a sense of escapism – from the norm, from now, from ourselves.Read More -
Hernan Bas speaks to Cultured about his new exhibition The Conceptualists
December 5, 2023'The Conceptualists stems from a series loosely based on the hobbies that emerged in the pandemic,' the artist explains. 'Everyone was doing things they didn’t...Read More -
Hernan Bas: The Conceptualists at The Bass Museum of Art
December 4, 2023Featuring 35 paintings, the exhibition (4 December 2023–5 May 2024) explores conceptual art as a permissive realm for creative behavior and an inviting space for...Read More -
Hernan Bas is interviewed by the Financial Times
November 28, 2022‘I literally have dreams about these characters and what they would do…’ – the artist discusses his exhibition, The Conceptualists.Read More -
Available now – Hernan Bas: Untitled (Grave-Rubbing), 2022, a new limited edition
November 17, 2022Available to purchase now Signed by the artist and numbered Priced from $600 (excl VAT) unframed The work offers a glimpse into the practice of...Read More -
Apollo – In the studio with… Hernan Bas
November 11, 2022The American artist Hernan Bas is best-known for his theatrical figurative paintings, in which androgynous young men appear engaged in rituals of courtship, love and...Read More -
Hernan Bas: Choose Your Own Adventure at Space K, Seoul
February 25, 2021The artist's first solo museum exhibition in Korea (25 February–27 May 2021) features works from 2007 to the present, including five new paintings. Read moreRead More -
The new Rubell Museum features works by Celia Paul and Hernan Bas
December 4, 2019Opening on 4 December 2019 the new Rubell Museum features a museum-wide installation of works that chronicle key artists, moments, and movements over the past...Read More -
A Brief Intermission, a major solo exhibition by Hernan Bas at CAC Málaga
September 21, 2018The artist's first solo museum exhibition in Spain (21 September–9 December 2018) features a selection of work made over the past ten years. Bas’ practice...Read More -
Hernan Bas: The Paper Crown Prince and Other Works at Colby Museum of Art
February 13, 201813 February – 3 May 2018 Boy adventurers, waifish fashion models, and a kite in the form of a pirate ship populate the moody and...Read More -
Hernan Bas: Cambridge Living reviewed in Time Out
September 15, 2017By Eddy Frankel Back before the war, a bunch of Cambridge students would climb up the city’s ancient buildings, sneak around on roofs, take pictures...Read More -
Frieze reviews Hernan Bas: Cambridge Living
September 15, 2017By Harriet Baker When the Detroit-based artist Hernan Bas arrived at Jesus College, Cambridge, for a period of research in 2016, he didn’t know what...Read More -
Hernan Bas talks to 032c about his current exhibition, Cambridge Living
September 11, 2017“If you slip, you will still have three seconds to live,” says Whipplesnaith of The Night Climbers of Cambridge. Its air of bravado and temerity...Read More -
The Evening Standard includes Hernan Bas: Cambridge Living in its best exhibitions to see this Autumn
September 2, 2017By Jessie Thompson Detroit-based artist has been inspired by a subject matter a long way from home: his new paintings explore the romanticism of life...Read More -
Hernan Bas: Florida Living at SCAD Museum of Art
February 14, 201714 February - 17 August 2017 SCAD Museum of Art presents 'Florida Living,' an exhibition of new artworks by acclaimed painter Hernan Bas. His most...Read More -
Hernan Bas illustrated interview in NeueJournal
March 29, 2016HERNAN BAS, ILLUSTRATED ANSWERS WITH NEO-ROMANTIC PAINTER. By NeueJournal. If Oscar Wilde were a 21st century visual artist we have a feeling that his work...Read More
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Gallery Exhibitions
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Hernan Bas: The Conceptualists
18 Nov 2022 – 21 Jan 2023 London Gallery IWhile earlier paintings hinge on characters with nascent identities and burgeoning interests, the works in this exhibition follow a new theme, in which Bas’ protagonists engage in a variety of obsessive pursuits that, deemed strange under everyday circumstances, might be rationalised or even championed when considered as ‘conceptual art’.Learn More -
Unmasked
12 Feb – 27 Mar 2022 VeniceAn exhibition in Venice of works by Milton Avery, Jules de Balincourt, Hernan Bas, María Berrío, Chantal Joffe, Doron Langberg, Alice Neel and Celia Paul.Learn More -
Hernan Bas: Venetian Blind
8 Feb – 14 Mar 2020 VeniceThe exhibition, which includes a decorative room screen and several large-scale works on paper, weaves characteristically expansive lines of enquiry around themes of privacy, mourning and seclusion, and the physical,...Learn More -
Hernan Bas: Cambridge Living
6 Sep – 21 Oct 2017 Victoria Miro MayfairFollowing a period of research while in residence at Jesus College Cambridge in 2016, Bas has developed new subject matter including the famed ‘Night Climbers of Cambridge’, a group of...Learn More -
House Work
25 Jan – 18 Mar 2017 Victoria Miro MayfairIncluding Mamma Andersson, Jules de Balincourt, Hernan Bas, Marc Chagall, Peter Doig, Adrian Ghenie, David Harrison, Karen Kilimnik, John Kørner, LS Lowry, Alice Neel, Celia Paul, Grayson Perry, Tal R,...Learn More -
Hernan Bas: Memphis Living (Paintings)
26 Apr – 31 May 2014 London Gallery IIAn exhibition featuring a series of new paintings and works on paper, and coinciding with the publication by Rizzoli, New York of HERNAN BAS: a lavish monograph that is the...Learn More -
Hernan Bas: Memphis Living (Works on Paper)
26 Apr – 31 May 2014 Victoria Miro MayfairAn exhibition of new paintings and works on paper, coinciding with the publication by Rizzoli, New York of HERNAN BAS: a lavish monograph that is the most comprehensive publication devoted...Learn More -
Hernan Bas: The Hallucinations of Poets
7 Oct – 13 Nov 2010 London Gallery IVictora Miro is delighted to present The Hallucinations of Poets , the third solo exhibition with the gallery by Hernan Bas. The American painter Hernan Bas's practice has always been...Learn More -
In the Company of Alice
22 Jun – 30 Jul 2010 London Gallery I'If you do not solve your painting problem in painting human beings, you do not solve it at all'. Gertrude Stein Hernan Bas, John Currin, Verne Dawson, Peter Doig, Marlene...Learn More -
Hernan Bas: Saints & Secret Sects
2 Jun – 28 Jul 2007 London Gallery IThis new body of work, Saints & Secret Sects furthers the artist's interest in figuring historical and mythological narratives within the imagery and iconography of popular culture, literature, queer culture...Learn More -
Hernan Bas: In the Low Light
23 Mar – 23 Apr 2005 London Gallery I'Sometimes it is so light. That hurts my eyes. And it's too many lamps - little sparkles all over, up high, and large ones that are dreadful. They could fall...Learn More -
Painting 2004
30 Mar – 24 Apr 2004 London Gallery IHernan Bas, Avner Ben-Gal, Varda Caivano, Charline von Heyl, John Kørner, Dana Schutz, Suling Wang Painting 2004 showcases the work of a younger generation of international artists originating from America,...Learn More
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