Michelangelo Bastiani

Michelangelo Bastiani, a Florentine artist, was born in Bibbiena (AR) in 1979. After getting his diploma at the Art Institute of Florence, he graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts with a major in Paintings and Photography under maestro Gustavo Giulietti. Today he works and lives in Tuscany. Career-wise he is praised for his exhibitions in both Italy and abroad: he is represented from Aria Art Gallery in Florence, Barbara Paci Gallery in Pietrasanta, Liquid Art System Gallery in Capri, SpazioMR Gallery in Rome, he has a permanent installation in the centre of Capri, he exhibited in Venice, Florence, Milan, Capri, Pietrasanta. He had displayed his work in London, Frankfurt, Oslo, Rome, Kiev and Istanbul and in the United States in New York, at the Mana Contemporary Museum of Jersey City, at the Art Context New York, Houston Art Fair and at the Jim Kempner Gallery and C24 Gallery in Chelsea, New York. Bastiani’s work is composed of interactive video projections and hologram installations on led screens, concentrated on the theme of water. Since the beginning of his career, water has been the core of artistic investigation of this artist, willing to represent an art that always changes, that it is never the same, features that the element intrinsically carries with itself. Because of its dynamic nature, water has always been difficult to represent. The strategy to solve this problem is through technology which allows a tangible interaction, a direct connection with the viewer: a waterfall will never have a constant flow, but it changes according to the people passing in front of it, who become effectively a part of the kinetic process of the work. The natural is compared to the artificial; the strength of the elements finds its representation in an antithetic marriage. A marriage of imprisonment of nature caused by man, but at the same time an exaltation and necessity from one to the other.

Submitted by Barbara Paci Art Gallery