Arkhouse Gallery – Interview with - Roland Bastien, 2024
"Interview by Sally Rhudy, curator of NFT Fine Art and Arkhouse Gallery"
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● Can you provide an overview of your artistic background, including any additional creative endeavors such as literature or poetry? How do these diverse forms of expression intersect and influence your artistic practice?
● – My artistic formation started at an early age, around four years old. I learned to read music simultaneously as words - my mother was a trained musician, exactly opera chant training; I switched later to piano. I was also very good at drawing from 5 to 8 and copying history art book pictures after school. I only used wax crayons on paper. Surprised by the quality of the copies, a grandpa’s friend who had a professional painter’s son took me to his studio on a Saturday, and I learned the basics for two years. I had, at the same time, around 12 and 13 years my first camera for my birthday and started photography with Khan, a master who was my family friend and I moved to 35 mm black and white later.
● From my mother, I discovered French poetry and Gabriel Faure's poetic songs and started to write poetry. I published my first poetry book at the age of 16 years old, the time we started studying French literature. I continued at a private art school: Composition, creative geometry, and optics. I had my first solo art show at 20 in Haiti and moved to Canada to study at the University of Art and Business. Later on, I started to produce visual material for a techno-punk band and joined the postmodern multidisciplinary movement in the 80s.
● What critical aspects of your identity or artistic vision do you want people to understand about Roland Bastien?
- My cultural DNA and formal bio-DNA correlate to a global concept with multiple ramifications to racial contradiction, conflict, and survival - so does my creativity. My father is the son of a French white man, and my mother is the daughter of a man from India. Both grandparents married black women with complex DNA from multiple African tribes and Caribbean natives. The spiritual and philosophical religious aspects of my education are from the teaching of an Indian master, from 4 years old to 16 until he passed away. As a Christian, the Huguenot community my father is related to gave me the test of Bach, Handel, and the Anglican liturgy. I sang as a bass voice in the choir for over five years before I left Haiti to study in North America. By the way, my parents were born during the American occupation in Haiti and had an American reflex that was transmitted to me. My dad was an engineer and a Christian pastor.
- How has your artistic practice evolved? Can you discuss any pivotal moments or milestones that have shaped your creative journey?
- It was a solitary and philosophical experience. I was an introverted boy who loved cartoon books, movies, and drawing clouds. This is where I learned to shape form, and light. The floating elements became intentional when I discovered Fra Angelico, Euclide, Pitagora, and, of course, Michel Angelo. The space and the enchanted atmosphere matched that global interest in life - a myth. Later on, I rooted my curiosity in Mondrian geometrical and spatial production. In the late ’70s, I constructed a multimedia production that included music, drawing, and floor sculpture. I named it “Semantic Phase V,” which brought me to the Canadian conceptual art world through a collective art show that crossed the country, including Museums for two years. Then, Canada Art Bank started to collect my work.
● What achievements do you consider fundamental to your career as a creative individual?
● At this time in my career, financial success and sober presence in major International and art collections fed my profound need before I retired.
● You utilize many mediums. Do you have a favorite? Which medium was your first?
● Drawing, most of my first interest, and watercolors. Only my monochrome period has no graphics; all the rest, even photographs, phrase the absence of hand strokes.
● How would you classify or describe yourself as an artist at this career stage?
● A global artist with a worldwide interest in actual.
● What role does technology play in your artistic process?
● A major role. I wrote a digital book named” Digital Mind,” in which I navigated through an algorithm pattern and faced multiple layers of semantic configurations that revealed my mind’s DNA. The rest are tools and gadgets. I love gadgets as I still love my first electric train.
How do you perceive your work within the contemporary art scene?
- Essential, but I did not have yet the attention I deserved.
● Considering the influence of digital technology, AI, and blockchain, how do you feel they shape your artistic practice?
- They are essential tools but not yet appropriately set for fine art, specifically blockchains. We need more protections from the government and the law to regulate that strongly - but the art community must also put an esthetic corpus that seizes the artwork in a better fate than just a Token.
● What philosophical or ideological interests inform your worldview and approach to creativity?
– semantic drove my creativity to shape what I called” meaning transfer” to portray the cohabitation of forms on a surface where gravity and velocity govern their cohabitation. For some tunes, you need the Formalism principle to conceive an aesthetic existence or just your background. This is an interdisciplinary experience.
● Do you believe art to be an intellectual pursuit?
– Art is the best tool to access the mind in a soluble condition: the aggregates must be empty to contemplate the mind.
● ArthouseGallery is using Web3 integration. Do you have any insights about your recent forays into the NFT tokenization of art?
● – it is a new adventure for me. I went through it 2 times with guidance and suspicion. As long the esthetic can cohabit with the tokenization, I will be fine.
● What advice would you offer to emerging artists navigating the intersection of art, technology, and contemporary society?
● – Well, make their production a cross-century as artwork, not as only a token that depends on currency.
About the exhibition: ‘The beauty and the forms’
● Can you provide some insights into your upcoming exhibition, 'The Beauty and the Forms'?
- Actually, this title was not the one I had chosen at that time. The curator who organized the first Shahasma fundraising in New York at the Broadway 4 building, proposed to change the title gravity and velocity to the beauty and theForms. It worked better for the digital world. Years later, I decided to make a handmade production with the concept of floating particles and ended up with Gravity and Velocity. The actual production is in work-in-progress mode.
● What inspired you to explore this particular concept for your exhibition?
● Visiting the European Cathedral in Italy, especially Venice St Marco and Padova, and Rome, trapped my vision for years – and viewing NASA videos inspired me for both versions.
● Could you elaborate on some of the key themes or messages conveyed in your artworks? How do they align with the broader narrative of your artistic practice?
● The making of art (formalism) and the dialogue within forms, Hand strokes in a semiotic mode conducted me as well as the viewers. Language and philosophy appeared often in my conceptual photography and video, especially in the series “Unboxing Time.” Satire absurdity, and folly are present but never a message – for that I used text in a digital book format.
- What approach did you take in creating each artwork for this exhibition?
● Before formatting the works, I sight a topography (installation) on which I choose or create works that can navigate like a vessel in space.
● Are there any quotations or external references that helped shape the conceptualization of your exhibition theme?
● Yes, especially for this one-spaceX experienced the Nasa database.
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