Hernan Bas is a Detroit-based artist who has been inspired by a subject matter a long way from home: his new paintings explore the romanticism of life at Cambridge.
Invited as a visiting artist by Jesus College Cambridge during the autumn of 2016, Hernan Bas spent time in the college and city researching the legends, rituals and rites of Cambridge life, past and present, from its legendary drinking societies to its daredevil ‘Night Climbers’.
A year in the making, the resulting paintings and works on paper documents societies’ bright young things and a life of both learning and youthful abandon.
Nine new figurative paintings by Bas are inspired by the mythos of varsity life. Featuring young men punting on the river or scaling the city’s historic architecture, these works draw on the lore of Cambridge to create contemporary coming-of-age narratives. The paintings have a dreamlike quality, as though time has been suspended; their subjects are on the cusp of sexual maturity, at once recognizable and anonymous, intimate and aloof.
Hernan Bas. September 6 - October 21, Victoria Miro Gallery.
