Home run! (en BcnWeek)

(published in BCNWeek Magazine, Barcelona, August 2006)

GARY BASEMAN'S VENISON /// MERCADO DEL BORNE /// TIL OCT 15

Venison is the lates work by the American artist, Gary Baseman. The pop art icon created this collection during his last visit to Barcelona in May 2006. Venison, the main character of this work, symbolizes a new phase of Baseman's always creative life, a new freedom for the fantastic world of Gary's creatures, a new wish. The Venison exhibition is about fear, anxiety, vulnerability and unobtainable beauty - all the things that have tormented him since boyhood.

There are certains similarities between Baseman's work and that of the Pop Art movement, but the effect is completely different. Pop artists take images from advertising the celebrity world and comics and put them on canvas. Baseman, who works mostly in acrylic and oils, also uses images of popular culture but transforms them in his mind, incorporates the icons with his life, and uses them as alter egos. He paints himself as a cat, a dog or an evil mouse.

As a kid, Baseman was fond of Disney and Warner Brothers cartoons; he did not try to copy the characters because he always felt it was important to develop his own. Today, his artwork is easily recognized because of its consistent style expressed in many different themes, but always creating crazy cartoon animals and humans placed in surreal worlds.

There is a combination of both high and low art in Baseman's work. and the artist says that he "smudges the line between genius and stumidity beyond all recognition." Indeed, there are these two opposite elements being combined, and that is wat makes his art so appealingly different. Recognised and respected, his art can be found in many prestigious permanent collections in museums around the world.