Hernan Bas’ expressionist and careful figurative works overtly reference late 19th-century decadent literature and art, as well as the contemporary symbolist and decorative aesthetic of the French group Les Nabis. The young protagonists are often portrayed alone or in small groups, with attitudes that are totally aimless, despite the fact that his oneiric ideals are artistically anchored in the iconography of the masculine androgynous dandy.
The characters in Hernan Bas’ paintings are imbued with potential because they are depicted at numerous thresholds, such as those between youth and age, innocence and experience, public and private worlds, and located amid a moving topography of internal and outer locations. The androgynous young men in these paintings participate in rituals of courting, love, and death that appear to be predicated on a theatrical exaggeration of emotion, recalling polarities of intellect and physicality.