Hernan Bas: ‘Get Off South Beach and Head to the Everglades’

‘I’m a hostile witness to Miami,’ says Hernan Bas. ‘However, politics and art fair aside, Florida aesthetically is beautiful, and it’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed.’

Bas is speaking to me on Zoom from his studio in Little Havana, Miami‘s old Cuban neighbourhood—a safe distance from the MAGA caps of Mar-a-Lago, and just across the bay from the crowds who descend annually on South Beach for Art Basel (6–8 December 2024) and Miami Art Week (1–8 December 2024).

One of the most celebrated artists working out of the city today, Bas was born in Miami in 1978. He temporarily moved with his family to Ocala in upstate Florida—‘Dad had a fantasy of raising us kids on a farm, but it didn’t really pan out too great’—before settling back in the city when he was a teen.

This was the early 1990s: a decade before Miami-based philanthropist and art collector Norman Braman convinced Art Basel to stage a fair stateside, and another ten before he bankrolled the construction of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. Back then, as an aspiring young artist, Bas had to look for inspiration at the city’s Center for the Fine Arts—now the Pérez Art Museum Miami—and at Miami’s public library, where he would head, in lieu of maths class, to read any art book he could find.

‘I would educate myself on Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, and the American 20th century painter Isabel Bishop,’ he says. ‘Anything I could get my hands on. If I didn’t know an artist, I’d go to the library and find out as much as I could. At some points, I knew more about art and artists than half my teachers at art school.’

It was a self-education put into practice when Bas took up a post as a jack-of-all-trades at the Rubell Museum—the private art collection of Miami residents Mera and Don Rubell—where the young artist would hang paintings, give tours, and do desk work.

‘When I was a kid, I didn’t have the same fear that others had of going into a museum,’ Bas says. ‘By the end of my time with the Rubells, I knew their collection like the back of my hand.’ It’s a familiarity that the artist can boast about even more so today, since the Rubells have become one of Bas’ foremost supporters, hosting major surveys in 2007 and 2020 dedicated to the increasing archive of his work in their collection.

Bas’ inquisitive mind has stuck with him into adulthood: his paintings synthesise the gothic writings of Mary Shelley and Oscar Wilde with the designs of the Memphis Group, the aesthetics of the androgynous dandy with the remote-controlled replica of the Loch Ness monster that sits within the ‘cryptozoologist section’ of his studio collection of oddities. ‘I’m not one of those artists that works in a bubble; I look everywhere. Call it a mixtape!’

Lately, he’s been sampling from Florida aesthetics: a landscape painting of Everglades National Park—the grasslands an hour west of the city—can be spotted in the frame behind him during our call; while photographs from a trip to Florida Keys for a birthday party last week—dropping by the Spanish colonial-style home of Ernest Hemingway—are likely candidates for next season’s output, including his forthcoming solo show at Lehmann Maupin in Seoul in March 2025.

Despite Florida’s beauty, it’s a subject that he’s only explored in the last few years. ‘When you’re young and from a city where no one knew art was going on, it was easy to be pigeonholed as a “Miami artist”,’ he says. ‘I was worried that, if I explored those themes, it would cement this further.’ Adding, ‘Now, I don’t care.’

Although he admits that, in hindsight, it’s a positionality that comes with its benefits, citing how the city’s slower pace helped him during the formative years of his career, compared to the bullring of New York’s art scene.

‘When art collectors or prospective gallerists would come to town and request studio visits, much of the time me and my friends wouldn’t know who they were or that they were a big deal. This naivety helped—for me at least—as I’m a flake and, if I really knew how important they were, I imagine I would have been too nervous to let them through the door.’

These years inadvertently became a dress rehearsal for what was to come: the arrival of Art Basel Miami Beach in 2003 and, with that, a revolving door of fair-goers knocking at his studio, eager to catch a glimpse of the artist in situ.

‘Early on, it had its fun moments,’ Bas says. ‘Great bands would come and perform during the fair, while gallerists such as Jeffrey Deitch would always have a great show with an artist I was into. Now, we’ve got Paris Hilton DJ-ing. I’m not going out for that; nothing against Paris or anything.’

Luckily, in those early days, there was a welcome alternative in the form of POPLIFE, a weekly dance party where he went religiously for three years. Dedicated to hip-hop and electronic music, the dance floor in the city’s Design District became an epicentre for creative Miamians, and it was there that the artist met his now-partner of 20 years.

So how would Bas—Miami’s ‘hostile witness’—do art week? ‘Miami is a sapling when it comes to the forest of culture, but aesthetically it’s beautiful and there’s so much wonder to explore. Once you’ve seen the fair and enjoyed the shows, get off South Beach, hire an airboat and head to the Everglades. That would be my advice.’ —[O]

Main image: Hernan Bas. Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul, and London.