A new series of works by the US artist Hernan Bas, due to be unveiled in Venice, will focus on issues around mass tourism. The exhibition Hernan Bas: The Visitors will feature more than 30 new paintings in an “immersive installation” conceived specially for Ca’ Pesaro International Gallery of Modern Art (7 May-30 August).
The artist created some of the works during a residency in the city. “Venice itself, long shaped by exchange and now strained by mass tourism, becomes both setting and mirror to the works’ concerns,” an exhibition statement says. “Bas exposes the absurdity of iconic clichés of tourism such as the Mona Lisa or the Trevi Fountain; dark tourism destinations such as Chernobyl, Alcatraz and the Aokigahara Forest; and tourist traps designed to con, swindle or disappoint.” The artist was contacted for comment.
“The monumental cycle The Visitors represents a vision that is always before our eyes, made up of gullible, voyeuristic tourism that at times goes beyond the limits of respect for others and, in extreme cases, for human dignity,” writes Elisabetta Barisoni, the director of the Ca’Pesaro museum, in the exhibition catalogue. “In these works, which at first glance appear to be souvenir photos or mementos of exotic travels, the fragility of the values of history and memory is revealed, and our sense of reality is shaken.”
Bas begins with the visual memory of his hometown—the “vibrant, superficial, crowded and contradictory Miami”, Barisoni says, outlining the artist’s vision. The canvasses on show in the monumental rooms of the gallery will depict a procession of youths who represent cliches of the contemporary tourist, particularly North Americans and Europeans. “Many of these new figures appear caught in acts of performance or pretence; whether posing, taking photographs or assuming disguise,” an exhibition statement says. “One of Bas’s tourists claims resident status, another (American) poses as a Canadian and a further visitor to Thailand stages an encounter with a python.”
“They are tourists who, at best, neither know nor understand the cultures they encounter and who frequently, through a combination of naiveté and arrogance, offend them,” Barisoni adds. The works will be displayed adjoined together as in a digital collage.
Portrait of Hernan Bas, 2026 Photo: © Silvia Ros
The series is timely as the lagoon city continues to grapple with the effects of rampant overtourism. Each year around 30 million visitors flood Venice, a Unesco world heritage site and home to fewer than 50,000 people. The onslaught has pushed locals to the mainland as they flee rising rents and tourist-clogged streets. Two thirds of visitors are day trippers, who add little to the local economy, according to official statistics.
A controversial trial tourist tax was introduced in 2024; the city council, under mayor Luigi Brugnaro, announced in October of that year that the fee in 2025 would double to €10 for those who book less than four days in advance of their arrival in Venice.
“It is especially significant to present such a courageous cycle in a place that attracts extensive international tourism, such as Venice,” Barisoni writes. “Over the years, the lagoon city itself has suffered the rise of forms of tourism that show little respect for its monuments, its lagoon, its inhabitants and, in short, its thousand-year history.”
The show is supported by Bas’s galleries Victoria Miro, Lehmann Maupin and Perrotin.
