Hugo Bastidas at Nohra Haime - New York

In his new exhibition titled "Omens in Grisaille," the Ecuadorian-born Hugo Bastidas referenced origins and displacement, both cultural and natural. He presented eight oil-on-linen canvases (all 40 by 60 inches, 2002) with a washed-out quality that recalls charcoal drawings. The artist's deftly stippled, textured works resemble blurry travel photographs of exotic locales, snapshots taken in a time before mass tourism and Club Med. The blacks and grays shimmer and flicker as if drenched in sunlight; this implied glare makes the imagery less legible and encourages closer inspection.

The scenes appear suspended between the real and dream worlds. These are slow takes; each work is riddled with an immensely pleasing, slow-burning wit. There is a deadpan, retro quality to the paintings that seems innocuous and a bit flatfooted at first, until Bastidas's allegorical riffs on cultural malaise and environmental disruption, bearing a tinge of Tansey-like irony, start to take hold.

In sly, plaintive compositions, Bastidas naturalizes incongruous scenarios of ecological imbalance. Tip of the Iceberg depicts tourists on a tropical island staring straight ahead, oblivious to a continent-sized iceberg that has just floated past them. In Overboard, a shimmering Amazon-like river has become a watery highway congested with lifeboats. Scarecrows shows an endless wheat field presided over by crucified money managers dressed in tattered corporate suits and ties. In Inching Along, Bastidas recontextualizes our concept of urban sprawl with his image of a Third World shantytown morphed into modernist tract housing.

The works are odes to a stressed mental environment and put forth a plea for cultural integrity. Compositional rectitude and precise brushwork add to their persuasive power. The artist seems to suggest that media-produced fantasies of natural and cultural sanctity have replaced authentic values. In Pale Reflections, for example, two public buildings are presented in a horizontally bisected canvas. The upper portion depicts Cinderella's Castle at Disneyland shimmering under an unreal sun. Below, we see an inverted image of an ancient site of worship, seemingly submerged, yet strongly present and alive to those who want to see it.

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