Back again we are proud to showcase one of our favorites as BASK has given us his second piece from his latest exhibition entitled “Camping With Mole-Man.” Check out BASK in the 1xRUN Archives to see past RUNs.
1xRUN Interview
Camping With Mole-Man by BASK
1xRUN: Tell us how Camping With Mole-Man came about.
BASK: It was the signature piece that I did for my most recent show “A Scenic Riot” at OHNO!Doom. I came up with the name of the show first and then I set out to making a piece that the entire show would revolve around and that’s how the Camping With Mole-Man came to fruition. It doesn’t really have any profound or deep analysis to it, there’s just a stream of consciousness of taking the words “scenic riot” and just following it through my stream of consciousness. I started thinking of a variety of dark animals, then I thought of moles, then I thought of Mole-Man. Then I wanted to bring in the scenic part, so that’s where the KOA came in, along with the little kids playing around, and then Camping With Mole-Man was born.
1xRUN: It seems like you take some significant risks in applying your medium. Can you talk about that part of your style and just in general taking risks as an artist?
BASK: Sure. I personally like to build images up, and then efficiently break them down again. I like to torture the shit out of my paintings, not holding them sacred. So it’s like I toil and get meticulous with things in the process, only to then deface it and defile it, give it some wear and tear. When you do that it actually makes you look at the image a bit harder, and a little bit longer. In a weird way it makes me appreciate it more. I can see that it was something that was built up over time. It’s almost like how the Buddhist do the sand sculptures only to be washed away by the tide. Not to say this is on the same level as that, but I think the same kind of impermanence is the same vein, not holding anything sacred.
1xRUN: You also work on a lot of re-purposed wood, some of it has maybe seen some better days, do you want to touch on that for us?
BASK: Absolutely. That kind of flows into what I was saying earlier. I like to scour alley ways and junkyards and find things that have been discarded. I like to find panels that have that natural wear and tear in them. I never work on a brand new canvas or anything that’s new. Even if I get panels brand new, I’ll let them sit and weather, I’ll use them for other purposes before I eventually use them in a painting. It’s the starting point in every single piece, for the medium to already have a history. For the piece to already had this string of events that it’s gone through, then the final destination is whatever I paint on it.