HERNAN BAS, YOUNG DO JEONG

Influenced by the writers of the 19th century Decadent Movement, in particular Oscar Wilde, Bas’s works weave together stories of adolescent adventures and the paranormal with classical poetry, religious stories, mythology and literature. Often tinged with nihilistic romanticism with veiled expressions of homoerotic tension between the adolescent figures situated in lush landscapes, his paintings seem to evoke the hidden desires and fantasies of the viewer. For his new series of paintings, the artist was inspired by Bathers by a River by the eminent French Fauvist Henri Matisse (b. 1869 - d. 1954).

Young Do Jeong depicts the complex inner world of his subconscious derived from his personal experiences while growing up in two different cultures of the East and the West. Metaphorical yet filled with pure aesthetic beauty, his works subtly reveal the latent inner worlds and desires that one might have subconsciously contained. With images that traverse the boundaries of the abstract and the figurative, achieved with bold brushwork in multifarious color palettes using various painting materials including acrylic, oil, ink, spray, color pencil and graphite, the artist creates a fantastical atmosphere on his canvas.

A two-man show exclusively designed to showcase the new paintings of each artist - Young Do Jeong with his consecutive series of new works from his ‘Plastic Freud’ series, along with the new paintings of the Bathers series of Bas - this exhibition invites the audience to experience the two sensual yet wild and trouble-free worlds created by these gifted artists.

• Born in 1978 in Miami, FL, Hernan Bas’s works have been exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions around the world. His work is part of the permanent collections of New York’s Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (LA MoCA), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SF MoMA), among others. The artist lives and works in Detroit, MI and Miami, FL.
• Born in 1985 in Korea, Young Do Jeong received his B.F.A in Painting at Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, RI), and M.F.A. in Painting and Drawing at Tyler School of Art of Temple University (Philadelphia, PA). The artist’s work has been introduced in gallery exhibitions and major international art fairs, including Art Basel, Hong Kong, Art Basel, Basel, and Fiac (Foire international d’art contemporain), Paris. The artist lives and works in Seoul.