9 December 7-13, 2023 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | Contents | Letters | news | night+Day | CuLture | Cafe | MusiC | HERNAN BAS CREATES HIS OWN ART FAIR IN “THE CONCEPTUALISTS.” | BY DOUGLAS MARKOWITZ H ernan Bas’ studio in Little Havana is as stimulating and visually rich with de- tails as one of his paintings. Space-age furniture pieces made of sleek, rounded plastic recur through the space. There are shelves full of art books, ceramics, taxidermies of local birds and fauna, and other knickknacks and souvenirs. There’s even an oddly specific collection of dollhouse-size replicas of the Amityville Horror house. “I just thought it was inter- esting that people were making models of them,” he says of the models. But the most important model may be the one on a table in the center of the back room, a planning di- orama for “The Conceptualists,” Bas’ upcoming show at the Bass in Miami Beach. Its stark, white color and boxy form evoke another horror entirely, that of Art Basel Miami Beach. “I was very picky about it since it’s opening dur- ing the fair; everyone’s in that mindset, and most people come to Miami just for the fair,” Bas says. “I wanted to mimic the layout of an art fair like you’re standing and looking down the rows of booths.” Fairs like Art Basel can bring out the worst the art world has to offer, shoving all manner of human cre- ativity into a massive marketplace where art matters less than how much a deep-pocketed collector pays for it. With “The Conceptualists,” Bas has con- structed his own much more entertaining art fair. Each of the 35 paintings, displayed on printouts taped to a wall when I visited the studio, features an artist with a different type of absurd conceptual art practice. “They all have their own little things going on, and most of them are, to me, intentionally funny or have some kind of dark humor. Like this guy is a sand sculptor,” Bas explains, gesturing to a lad with white pants and a Breton stripe shirt, “but he specifically carves beached whales and dolphins.” Every piece in “The Conceptualists” engages in the melodramatic yet ridiculously unserious artistic discipline that one usually sees in parodies of the art world like The Square or Velvet Buzzsaw. They all look somewhat alike, all possessing the same slim, androgynous build and gaunt complexion that has become a hallmark of Bas’ paintings. The artist brushes off any suggestion of psychosexual fixation, “I just have a type, I guess,” he says. “But also, with this series, there’s a certain nature to conceptual art, like in my experience with kids in art school, espe- cially if you’re a handsome young man, you can get away with almost anything in terms of art.” “The Conceptualists” seems to get away with a lot. There’s the painter who exclusively paints portraits of his identical twin brother (in other words, self- portraits) and a photographer taping Polaroid selfies to milk cartons in a supermarket. There’s a pillow- fighting match in a boxing ring and a guy making pointillist canvases using darts. One artist stands in the middle of an ’80s prom cliché, surrounded by bal- loons and wearing a purple jacket and eight different flower boutonnieres from jilted dates. “His work is performance-based and centers around disappoint- ment,” Bas adds. Another makes sculptures out of Popsicle sticks but insists on procuring each one from actual Popsicles he eats himself; the scene shows him building his inevitable final work, his own Popsicle-stick coffin. Obvious craftsmanship and at- tention to detail aside, the series presents something rare in contemporary art: classically inclined, repre- sentational work meant to be purely funny. “It’s been a really fun series because I ba- bas at bass Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, Seoul, and London m i a m i a r t w e e k Hernan Bas, pictured in his studio in 2017, has put together “The Conceptualists” at the Bass, featuring 35 major works. >> p 10
