These works embody introspection, a deep love for painting, and an openness to possibility.

-Wonderland magazine

On August 30, 2024 Indra Gallery London opened its doors for WONDER\SIDE, a visual exploration of an artist’s growth and evolution.

WONDER\SIDE showcases Bastian’s visual evolution and artistic growth. In these sensory and cerebral “one-shot” paintings, he skillfully transforms form into visual language, creating a synthesis of texture, shape, and composition that engages with art history through a contemporary lens. These works embody introspection, a deep love for painting, and an openness to possibility. Viewers are invited to immerse themselves in a visual world that evokes a state of feeling, mirroring the spontaneous nature of the forms.

-Wonderland magazine

“Wonderside” is a term that encapsulates the paradoxical nature of art— as it draws you inward it can make the outside world seem irrelevant. This “wonder” side of art is the essence of the works created during a challenging yet unexpectedly uplifting period when time seemed to stand still, but creativity continued to flourish.

“WONDER\SIDE is a statement on the strength of creativity and imagination in spite of personal deserts. Inner conflicts, tough, and sometimes, destitute situations, emotionally, psychologically and so on, sought to derail my life. Loneliness, family strifes, suicidal feelings. Often, words like depression, and suicidal, get thrown around today in our culture, but many people really struggle with them from time to time and some chronically. Nevetheless, when they reared themselves in my life, my art remained unfazed and even expanded and grew exactly when I feel like it shouldn’t have. That, to me, is a strength and a beauty in and of itself, and I’m fortunate to have art as that refuge. This astonished and greatly encouraged me.”

“The language and process of these works is where tradition aligns with the contemporary, the entire work underpinned by a visual progression.

Each painting is a moment in and of itself made up of several minuscule moments and utterances”

WONDER\SIDE at Indra Gallery, Hackney London 2024

“you’re already lost in the visual experience, but that is the beginning of an all new one. "

“Artists see things, and we respond to the world around us, circumstances, trouble, external and internal. Likewise, we respond to our creative drives, and we have the ability and what I consider a privilege to share that experience with others. That’s a big part of art to me, that’s the wonder side.”

“I was fortunate by God’s graces, to be able to live and see my art flourish despite that, and even be in a place of wonderment, and many people don’t make it out of that. That’s what my art has been, and WONDER\SIDE is simply a wide invitation into that experience. It invites curiosity and openness to possibility.”

The paintings in this body of work are as much about themselves, if not more than they are, of depicted subject matter. Because here, I’m playing with the idea of depiction itself, or of presenting a picture. You try to wrap your mind around what’s being depicted, and then you find yourself simply immersed by what the forms are doing, this goes back and forth and becomes something different entirely. By the time you figure out what it is you’re viewing, you’re already lost in the visual experience, and in essence that is the experience itself.