Hernan Bas, The Forest for the Trees
Opening Reception: March 12, 2011, 7:30 – 10 pm
Fredric Snitzer Gallery
Gallery 2247 NW 1st Place
Miami, FL 33127
snitzer.com
Hernan Bas, A Forest Through the Forests, 2011
Fredric Snitzer Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Miami-born artist Hernan Bas. March 12 – April 14 2011
Though recently transplanted to Detroit, Michigan, Hernan Bas is still considered one of South Florida’s most celebrated artists and one of its most prolific—turning out many-layered compositions depicting naturalist themes, compelling subjects, and symbolism that is both manifest and mysterious. References to the Romantic poets, the American transcendentalists and mythology appear prominently in his work. His signature inspired landscapes reveal an abiding love for, and faith in the transformative powers of nature. But Bas’s landscapes are as concealing as they are revealing.
In the large-scale panoramic painting, The Road Ahead is Golden…Silver…Bronze, the largest work the artist has done to date, an isolated male figure sits by a stream nursing a bloodied shin. Not too far off, a white car comes to a stop having careened down a ravine, and further in the distance rusted bits of cars—shells of earlier wrecks—meld with the landscape like relics as a color palette of burnished gold, silver and bronze washes over the panels, weaving through the greens, blues and browns of swirled brushwork, both illuminating and abstracting the scene.
In this painting, and in other works in the show, the artist skillfully plays with the tension between what you see and what you don’t, as he aims to strike a new balance between abstraction and representation. For an artist heretofore interested in creating scenes with more focused narratives, this new interest in abstract issues is both a departure and an evolution.
Charles Burchfield’s uniquely rendered landscapes with their passionate expression and eerie qualities are strong influences here, as are the bold lines of block prints and silkscreen techniques that inform this new work. The artist includes several large-scale works on paper in the exhibition.
The Forest for the Trees continues through April 14, 2011.
