Hernan Bas

Hernan Bas: I'm in Miami now. I spend more time in Miami, these days, and I've been back here since March 2020 and I haven't been back to Detroit or anywhere.

 

I think it's the latter for me. Social distancing is not a stretch for me. That's my day-to-day life, regardless, to some extent. I basically go from home to the studio every single day, pretty much. And I don't have any studio assistants, so that was never an issue either. I was in Italy right as the whole world was shifting, so when I got back to Miami and saw what happened to Venice and Milan, I'm not doing anything. I'm not going anywhere.

 

I did lose my mom to Covid, which was terrible. I mean, during the lockdown, Miami has not really been super responsible, let's put it that way. To this day, it's mind-numbing how people just don't understand what social distancing means. And that was, I don’t know, it sucked, but besides that, it's been relatively peaceful. 

 

I probably would have run to New York faster. No matter what, there is still that Miami flavor that everything's a spectacle, you know? When I was younger, the only art you could see was what is now called the Perez Museum, which was four blocks from my high school. My only understanding of art was going to the public library by myself, or with my friends, and just poring over all the books they have.

 

There was no gallery district. Technically, the gallery that I worked with in Miami all these years was way down south, where nobody goes now. You wouldn't find anyone coming for Basel. The whole creation of Wynwood and the art district was also somewhat of a ploy for real estate as far as I was concerned. Early on, these developers would give you the free space for studios, and then, coincidentally, a few years later, the neighborhood's up and coming. It's a classic case of gentrification. So, I tried to get away from that as quickly as possible. I want to do my own thing. I don't want to be beholden to whatever this is. I'm kind of ambivalent about the whole Miami scene. One of the reasons I went to Detroit was because I wanted to jump out of this. 

 

The Southern Gothic world of, you know… Detroit, basically [laughs]. My work has nothing to do with urban decay. What I was intrigued by was the fact was there were all these “haunted” houses. That's what I found more interesting than urban-type decay. I was only there for maybe one year, full-time, when I finally started being okay with painting tropical-ness. Being away from it, you miss it. I first started making those pink flamingo works when I went to Detroit. If you live in Miami, you can’t paint flamingos, but in Detroit you can, they won't make fun of me [laughs]. So, it was a weird mental flip that happened.

 

I was born in Miami but right afterwards, my parents moved to the middle-of-nowhere in northern Florida, and I spent seven years of my life there. That's where I think that sort of spirit of the South imbued itself in me, because we'd take trips, weekend trips with all my family, and we would go to Weeki Wachee Springs. That’s sort of the side of Florida I think of when I try to paint anything in my head that is emblematic. I've never done art deco, bikini-clad ladies.

 

Good question. I don't really know. I'm trying to think back to the early work. It seems so far away now, 20 years almost. I think it was always the love of literature and just characters, in general. I was more of an avid reader of fiction when I was younger than I am now. But not just fiction; mythology and the tie-in to the paranormal. I've always sort of thought of the work as being... at the end of the day, when I'm off the planet, it will be like an encyclopedia of the strange course of my life.

 

But the actual character of the figure? I don't like to think of it as portraiture at all. I've been quoted as describing it as the state of where you don't really know what or who you are. Or back to literature, a Catcher in the Rye type of thing. It's all there. And I've always been drawn to that sort of in-between. I mean, no one wants to read a book where the character is so easily understood and defined. 

 

Oh, I haven't thought of that in a while, but I think a good example would be something I recently read about Edward Hopper. The reason those paintings are creepy is that the main figures tend to be looking off, I guess you could call it off-stage, or off-camera, but always looking at something not in the frame. That sort of weirdness I've really become drawn to in his works recently. Another person I came to late in the game was Charles Burchfield. He's not someone I became exposed to until maybe 10 years ago. The gloomy Burchfield stuff that people talk about, they talk about Song of Spring and the butterfly work. But he was a dark man.

 

Even within my own work, I've noticed particular trends where people are drawn to certain things even more. For example, I had two paintings that my gallerist here in Miami had to pick from for his little Miami art week exhibition. 

 

Yeah. So, that's the one he picked. But the one he opted out on, which is in a similar vein, has got blood in it. That automatically burns off a considerable amount of collectors. It's got a similar kind of thing going on, but the hammerhead shark has blood on its mouth. A little Hemingway never hurt anybody.

 

I think with the characters generally, they're isolated. But I think something about the idea of being forcibly isolated, maybe? Taking that character that was relatively normal, but in this stage of life, he has to become manic about something. A lot of my characters had that already in them, but I feel like it got more exaggerated. 

 

The vampires, yeah, that was a fun one. I liked the idea of… what would you call it, providing comfort to creatures who don't know what's going on. After leaving Venice, just after the pandemic, I read this story about how the canals are clearing, turning crystal clear. True or not, this is amazing. Nature conquers all. So I think that was how the sort of creatures, literal animal creatures, came into play for me. And just being in Miami, too, just the back of my commercial building at the studio, I remember seeing birds that are not often seen. I was like, "What is happening?" So there was a bit of a weird return to nature that was happening in the paintings that I kind of got fascinated with. But, with the vampires, sometimes it's just for the sake of humor that I do things. 

 

I think that people want to take things so seriously in general, and it's the grand tradition of painting. They are just grand paintings. People will automatically associate the size of the work to something being historical.

 

I like making these epic paintings of the dull moments, in a sense. Two or three years ago, I made one of the largest paintings I've ever done. It was based on the Andy Warhol estate. He was a massive hoarder, which we didn't know until he died. And so, the estate set these people up to catalog the apartment, and they found out how insane he was, basically. Jewels tucked under beds. All kinds of stuff. And so, the painting is this giant spread of all of Warhol's stuff with a cataloger sitting in the middle of all of it. Every single item in the painting was an item from Warhol's estate. I did a lot of research for that. I just loved the idea of this kind of painting, but it's really just this poor guy sitting with all of Warhol's estate all around him. The point of that work, Sorting Out Andy, was that if I make a history painting, I want it to be a moment that's been not just overlooked, but would never be discussed as being important. But to me, that's a really important moment in art history. That's what drew me to that whole scene. Also, just for fun, the idea of someone petting Warhol's wig… 

 

And, half the time, you're working away at this painting for, sometimes, months at a time. You kind of have to laugh for yourself, for your own sake, for your own sanity. 

 

Sitting alone in the studio and sometimes I think to myself, "I'm so funny.” [laughs]

 

I think it has potential to be completely ridiculous.

 

I mean, when you think of it, I don't know if ridiculous is the right word. Absurd, I guess, is the best descriptor. I watch all of those ghost hunter shows and it's always a bunch of nonsense. Nothing is ever really captured on film, or anything. But there is a lot of weird humor. The one thing I'm not super keen on, but think is hysterical, is to watch some of these people on TV who claim to be psychics. To me, it's just a laugh. 

 

It's definitely a thing. Even UFO stuff; I love seeing drawings kids make of UFOs, and stuff like that. I mean, that's a whole other genre. Vampires are hysterical. 

 

My older brother and older sister were the ones that got me into the paranormal when I was younger, that good weird stuff. When I was a kid, they would bring back books from the library  about vampires and ghosts, so I got a lot of my early goth from those two. My brother is still very much entrenched in that world in New Orleans, and my sister, who lives in California, still goes bigfoot hunting. That's half of my family: always hanging onto the weirdness.

 

I did a painting of a fictionalized portrait of the guy who has the Guinness World Record for most time spent watching Loch Ness. He lives in a van down by the river, literally. He's been looking for, I think, 42 years, or something like that. And he makes these little Loch Ness sculptures and he sells them. That's how he makes a living to eat. To me, it's not about proving that the Loch Ness monster exists but what it could be. Who knows? They're hopeful. People always think that the characters are sad, but I think they're hopeful. I love the idea of a character who would be willing, for the rest of their life, to look for something that doesn't exist.