Each of the protagonists depicted in Hernan Bas’s 37-part series “Conceptual ­Artists” (2023) is focused on an obsessive and somewhat eccentric practice. There is the “pointillist” who paints with meticulously targeted darts, the “popsicle stick sculptor” displaying his constructions pieced together from tiny components, and the craftsman decorating ponds with artificial water lilies made of origami flowers and doilies. The final and largest picture in the series, which Bas selected for his debut edition for TEXTE ZUR KUNST, shows an artist who, if the work’s title is to be believed, “exclusively paints portraits of conceptual artists who have never existed” – which is presumably to say, Bas himself, or his alter ego.Bas’s richly detailed symbolism recalls the mythologically charged subjects of the Nabis, with whom he shares literary points of reference such as Arthur ­Rimbaud, Oscar Wilde, and Joris-Karl Huysmans. Beside the aesthetic decadence and queer eroticism of those writers and poets, though, Bas also taps into contemporary sub­culture and pop. Printed on the sweater worn by “Conceptual Artist #37” is the advertising motif of Kenneth Anger’s short film “Scorpio Rising” (1963), merely one of many references to the artist’s creative influences in the painting, which wants to be explored like a “Where’s Waldo?” of queer art and cultural history. In its wealth of motifs and monumental formats (this triptych measures 274.3 × 640 cm in the ­original), Bas’s series takes up the mantle of classical history painting. Each ­picture has a hero whose actions are condensed and mythologized in diverse objects. Instead of major events, Bas paints the passions that anchor his protagonists’ identities, and the title of the series enshrines those idiosyncrasies – however peculiar (the original meaning of “queer”) they may seem – as conceptual art.