The human condition is the guiding principle in the work of Christiaan Bastiaans (Amsterdam, 1951). He raises current social issues – war, displacement, upheaval, exclusion – in his complex installations.
Bastiaans comes from a Dutch, French, Armenian and Indonesian background. His sense of being “different” leads him to look for sources not so much in the Netherlands as elsewhere. He travels to places where people have to get by with the most basic survival strategies and seeks out situations that revolve around life and death, beauty and terror.
Since in his installations he works with everything that comes to hand, he is free to work anywhere in the world. Sculptures, drawings, existing texts and images, photographs, videos, pieces of rope, iron wire, tree bark and performances: anything can be part of the work. He documents his photographs and images in his many Notebooks, which are the starting point for his installations, films and texts.
In Club Solo, Christiaan Bastiaans shows new work in addition to work from the past fifteen years.
During the opening of the exhibition, Hélène Vrijdag will give a performance that will also introduce Bastiaans’ new project Laboratories of Empire.
The artist was awarded the Jeanne Oosting Prize in 2022 for his incisive and gripping watercolours. In 2023 he was selected to be Amsterdam City Draftsman.
The performance is sponsored by the Amsterdam Art Fund.
14 May – 25 June 2023
wed to sun 11.00 – 17.00 hrs
opening 14 May 15.00 hrs
