Author Archives: Linnea

Off-kilter Occult: Hernan Bas

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I was excited to see that Hernan Bas’s had a new show up at Lehmann Maupin after first seeing his work at their downtown location in 2009. Even if I hadn’t, I would have been a sucker for the Baudelaire quote in the press release; “The loveliest trick of the Devil is to persuade you that he does not exist.” The Miami-born, Detroit-based painter examines lore and legends of the devil in this new group of paintings.

Tartini’s Dream (The Devil’s Trill)
I really enjoy his dense compositions, like the one above where intersecting branches cover every part of the picture plane, as if they are trying to force their way out. His works tend to suggest complex narratives, suggested by the strange landscapes and dramatic little figures as much as their titles.

A Devil’s Bridge
The rainbow of colors used here is representative of his work, and the very bright and light hues he uses manage to seem subsumed into his overall dark composition. I love the figure in the foreground looking out over the water, while a shadowy figure lurks under the bridge behind him. It’s cliche, perhaps, but it exists in a vividly colored and slightly off-kilter alternate world.

Detail, A Devil’s Bridge

Detail, A Devil’s Bridge

Recently in a interview Bas said of his more recent work:

The best way that anyone has described the work so far was in an interview with Maurizio Cattelan titled “Something Off,” which really sums up these thoughts again on how I view the more successful aspects of the work—there’s always something off about them, and I strive towards that off-ness whenever I’m painting. It can come from how I render the figures or skewing the scale; something just always has to be a little wrong. I don’t want to make right painting. 

More from his interview with Art21 here.

A Satanist on a Tuesday

“Occult Contemporary” is up at Lehmann Maupin Gallery in Chelsea through April 21.

The Rare Graffiti Tree and Other Urban Species from photographer Mitch Epstein

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Photographer Mitch Epstein’s work at up Sikkema Jenkins through this past weekend couldn’t come at a better time. Outside, the first really Spring (or perhaps Summer?) weather had set the trees in bloom, and inside Epstein’s homage to New York was similarly alush.

Epstein spent a year photographing the great trees of New York city (as you can see in the detail below NYC boasts the rare urban Graffiti Tree species). The trees, rather than people or buildings, become the focus of the shots.



Unfortunately the trees seem to be trying to kill me right now. All the blooming means seasonal allergies are here, and I am sneezing my head off. Find more information about the show here and more information about Epstein on his website http://www.mitchepstein.net/.

Cloud Maker Berndnaut Smilde

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Nimbus II, 2012
Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde has been creating clouds! (This gets a exclamation point because I love these in a very geeky way.) These temporary, artfully lighted bits of smoke and moisture are installations that the artist produced first in 2010 and earlier this year. In an statement about Nimbus (2010), the artist said: 

On the one hand I wanted to create an ominous situation. You could see the cloud as a sign of misfortune. You could also read it as an element out of the Dutch landscape paintings in a physical form in a classical museum hall. At the same time I wanted to make (for once) a very clear image, an almost cliché and cartoon like visualisation of having bad luck: “Indeed, there nothing here and bullocks, it’s starting to rain!” –Interview with Smilde.

Watch Nimbus II in action in this video to see how the artist prepares and sets off the cloud in the above photo. More of the Smilde’s work can be found on his website.

Nimbus, 2010