Exhibitions

Hernan Bas. The Visitors

Venice, Italy

Hernan Bas confronts the absurdity of global tourism through cinematic paintings of figures caught between wonder and voyeuristic boredom.

Acrylic and water based oil on linen

Image credit

HB, Alone with Lisa (the Louvre, Paris), 2025 Acrylic and water based oil on linen 127 x 101.6 cm / 50 x 40 in © Hernan Bas

Meet the artist

The Movement

Contemporary Art, Painting, Social Criticism

ArtLovers Tip

Look closely at the textures in the backgrounds. Bas often uses water-based oils to create thin, ghostly layers that make the solid monuments—like Alcatraz or the Trevi Fountain—look as fragile and fleeting as a postcard.

Exhibition Highlights - What you'll see

Miami-based artist Hernan Bas brings his signature blend of queer domesticity and Gothic intrigue to the Venetian lagoon. In this site-specific series, Bas turns his gaze toward the "visitor"—the western tourist wandering through landmarks and dark tourism sites. His work has long explored the transition from youth to adulthood, and here, that vulnerability is projected onto the awkward, often disrespectful dance between the traveler and the destination.

You're watching large-scale canvases where acrylic and water-based oils create a lush, almost swampy atmosphere. Inside the baroque halls of Ca’ Pesaro, figures stand before the Mona Lisa or the ruins of Chernobyl, their bodies rendered with a delicate restlessness. The light in the paintings feels humid and artificial, mirroring the sanitized experience of a bucket-list attraction while the grand windows of the museum look out onto the very city that inspired these satires.

Worth the trip

  • Site-specific resonance: These thirty new works were conceived after the artist’s residency in Venice, creating a biting dialogue with the city’s own struggle with mass tourism.
  • Narrative depth: Bas’s paintings operate like short stories, filled with hidden codes, dark humor, and a lingering sense of the occult hidden in plain sight.
  • Architectural contrast: Placing these contemporary, restless protagonists within a 17th-century marble palace heightens the tension between historic weight and modern superficiality.

How to experience it

Take your time with "Alone with Lisa"; notice how the protagonist’s back is turned to the masterpiece, capturing a modern sense of displacement. The exhibition flows best when you allow the humor of the "tourist traps" to settle before considering the deeper loneliness of the figures. Afterward, walk toward the San Stae vaporetto stop and watch the actual crowds through the lens of Bas’s satire—the city suddenly feels like a staged set.

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