Biography

Florentine artist Michelangelo Bastiani graduated first from Florence's Art Institute and later from the Academy of Fine Arts, where he majored in painting and photogray under Maestro Gustavo Giulietti.

Bastiani lived in California and New York before returning to Tuscany, and has held critically-acclaimed exhibitions in the Italian cities of Florence, Venice, Milan, Capri, and Pietrasanta, and internationally in London, Istanbul, Frankfurt, Kiev, and Oslo. In the United States, Bastiani has exhibited at the New York Context Art Fair, the Jim Kempner Gallery in New York, the C24 Gallery in Chelsea, the Mana Contemporary Museum of Jersey City, and the Houston Art Fair. He is represented by the Liquid art system gallery in Capri, where he has a permanent installation.

Water has been at the core of Bastiani's artistic explorations since the beginning of his career, representing the constantly changing intrinsic nature of art, and he creates hologram installations and interactive video projections on led screens which explore this theme. Water has always been difficult to represent because of its dynamic nature, and Bastiani's strategy to resolve this problem is the use of technology which allows a direct connection and tangible interaction with the viewer. For example, his waterfall does not have a constant flow, but alters according to the people who pass in front of it and thus become a part of the work's kinetic process. The natural and the artificial are compared, and the strength of the elements is represented in their contrasting symbiosis: man necessarily both imprisons and exalts nature, and vice versa.