Hernan Bas

A Splinter (Study for Painting)

A Splinter (Study for Painting) is a large graphite work on paper by Hernan Bas that was intended as a study for a later painting. The composition features three unfinished figures, all of whom appear to be observing something unrendered or external to the picture plane. Around the group of figures roughly framed by the outline of a triangle, is a frenzy of loose marks and smudged lines that juxtapose the delicate features of the figures’ faces. Though aesthetically grounded in the iconography of the androgynous male dandy, the young protagonists of Bas’s oneiric visions are usually portrayed alone or in small groups, in attitudes of pure flânerie. Appearing as if suspended between adolescence and adulthood, Bas’s figures embody a fragile in-between state that the artist refers to as “fag limbo”. A Splinter portrays a fragment of this temporal space described by Bas, which acts as a psychic purgatory of sorts for young queer men.