A Splinter (Study for Painting)

2010 - Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

45 x 33 inches

Hernan Bas


A Splinter (Study for Painting) is a large graphite work on paper by Hernan Bas that was intended as a study for a later painting. The composition features three unfinished figures, all of whom appear to be observing something unrendered or external to the picture plane. Around the group of figures roughly framed by the outline of a triangle, is a frenzy of loose marks and smudged lines that juxtapose the delicate features of the figures’ faces. Though aesthetically grounded in the iconography of the androgynous male dandy, the young protagonists of Bas’s oneiric visions are usually portrayed alone or in small groups, in attitudes of pure flânerie. Appearing as if suspended between adolescence and adulthood, Bas’s figures embody a fragile in-between state that the artist refers to as “fag limbo”. A Splinter portrays a fragment of this temporal space described by Bas, which acts as a psychic purgatory of sorts for young queer men.


Hernan Bas creates expressionistic, yet highly detailed figurative paintings of young men. Though aesthetically grounded in the iconography of the androgynous male dandy, the young protagonists of Bas’s oneiric visions are usually portrayed alone or in small groups, in attitudes of pure flânerie. Whether confined to the intimacy of a genre scene or lost in the vertigo of a lush romantic landscape, his figures inhabit a fantasized world of implicit eroticism and ambiguous sensuality. Largely inspired by nineteenth-century decadent art and literature, Bas’s work also references the concurrent symbolist and decorative style of the French group Les Nabis. With a flamboyant palette and a refined touch, Bas revisits and reinterprets the various categories of classical painting from a homoerotic perspective that is seemingly melancholic, yet often humorous and witty.


Colors:



Related works sharing similar palette

What We Lose When Curating Follows the Money
© » HYPERALLERGIC

What We Lose When Curating Follows the Money Skip to content Gerhard Richter, "Tante Marianne" (1965), oil on canvas (all photos Olivia McEwan/ Hyperallergic ) LONDON — Something feels off from the introductory lines of the exhibition booklet for Tate Modern’s Capturing the Moment ...

Restaurant Tramo in Madrid embraces a more responsible future, bite by bite
© » WALLPAPER*

Restaurant Tramo embraces a responsible future, bite by bite | Wallpaper (Image credit: Photography by Juan Baraja...

Carolina Caycedo, BE DAMMED
© » KADIST

With Carolina Caycedo and Tamara Suarez Porras In Indigenous cosmogonies of the Americas, all bodies of waters are connected...

Noah Barker at Lodos
© » CONTEMPORARYARTDAILY

November 17 – December 16, 2023...

Nunca silencioso y verde
© » KADIST

Daniel Boccato

2016

Parrot Drawings or Paintings look like children’s drawings and seem quite innocent...

Turner Prize winner Jesse Darling makes a Miami Beach cameo
© » THEARTNEWSPER

Turner Prize winner Jesse Darling makes a Miami Beach cameo Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Art Basel in Miami Beach 2023 news Turner Prize winner Jesse Darling makes a Miami Beach cameo A self-portrait by Jesse Darling, who won the prestigious British award this week, is on sale at Chapter NY gallery Gareth Harris 9 December 2023 Share Jesse Darling, O Cowardly Word , 2022 Courtesy of the artist and Chapter NY, New York A self-portrait by the Turner prize winner Jesse Darling is available with Chapter NY gallery at Art Basel in Miami Beach...

Pierre Bal-Blanc: Collective Exhibition for a Single Body
© » KADIST

Curator Pierre Bal-Blanc introduces « Collective Exhibition for a Single Body – The documenta 14 score, Athens 2017 »...

Collector Beth Rudin DeWoody on Curating Her 10,000+ Piece Art Collection
© » ARTSY

Collector Beth Rudin DeWoody on Curating Her 10,000+ Piece Art Collection - Artsy Advertisement Art Market Collector Beth Rudin DeWoody on Curating Her 10,000+ Piece Art Collection Sandra Hale Schulman Mar 4, 2022 4:46pm Portrait of Beth Rudin DeWoody...

Brutalismo Americano
© » KADIST

KADIST presents Brutalismo Americano , a newly commissioned work by Brazilian artist Marlon de Azambuja...

Weekly Southeast Asia Radar: Puja Pantai in Selangor; young Cambodian singers talk old music
© » ARTS EQUATOR

Weekly Southeast Asia Radar: Puja Pantai in Selangor; young Cambodian singers talk old music | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Radar AP January 16, 2020 ArtsEquator’s Southeast Asia Radar features articles and posts about arts and culture in Southeast Asia, drawn from local and regional websites and publications – aggregated content from outside sources, so we are exposed to a multitude of voices in the region...

What I learned I no longer know; the little I still know, I guessed
© » KADIST

Pratchaya Phinthong

2009

Phinthong provided 5,000 Euros to exchange for Zimbabwean dollars, the most devalued and worthless currency in the world...

Fridge-Freezer
© » KADIST

Yoshua Okón

2015

Fridge-Freezer is a 2-channel video installation where Yoshua Okón explores the darker side of suburbia, d escribed by the artist as “ the ideal environment for a numb existence of passive consumerism and social a nd environmental disengagement...

Bayramiç Stone Mill
© » KADIST

Asli Çavusoglu

2020

In the exhibition Pink as a Cabbage / Green as an Onion / Blue as an Orange , Asli Çavusoglu pursues her work on color to delve into an investigation into alternative agricultural systems and natural dyes made with fruits, vegetables, and plants cultivated by the farming initiatives she has been in touch with...

Diane Arbus: A printed retrospective, 1960-1971
© » KADIST

Pierre Leguillon

2008

End of 2008, Pierre Leguillon presented at KADIST, Paris the first retrospective of the works of Diane Arbus (1923-1971) organized in France since 1980, bringing together all the images commissioned to the New York photographer by the Anglo-American press in the 1960s...

Friction / Where Is Lavatory?
© » KADIST

Taiyo Kimura

The wall installation Friction/Where is Lavatory (2005) plays off anxieties about time but utilizes sound to create a disconcerting experience of viewership: comprised of dozens of wall clocks sutured together, the work presents a monstrous vision of time at its most monumental...

Antigua, Guatemala: Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, El mensajero del bosque sumergido
© » KADIST

(The Messenger of the Sunken Forest) is the second chapter of a body of work that arises from the research carried out by Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa in December 2017 in the regions of Alta and Baja Verapaz, Guatemala...

The Invaders
© » KADIST

Ghita Skali

2021

The Invaders by Ghita Skali is a tale that bites you...

Guatemala City, Guatemala: Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, El guardián del bosque
© » KADIST

Narrative and performance interweave in Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa’s (Guatemala, 1978) practice through the use of images and sculptural objects linking history and autobiography...

Conceito abstrato
© » KADIST

Rodrigo Torres

2016

In his Conceito abstrato series, however, Rodrigo Torres turns to the abstract, using the shapes, numbers, lines, and subtle colors of international currencies to create non-representational forms with lavish geometries and baroque curving forms....