Bastian Raiss

Bastian Raiss was born in Hamburg/Germany in the early 1950's. His parents moved to Brazil when this first child of their's was barely half a year old. Even though the first 17 years of his life were spent in Rio de Janeiro and later Sao Paulo, formal education took place in local British schools. This was followed by two years in boarding school in Wales ("A" Levels). The lad's path then led him to Nashville, Tennessee, where he acquired Bachelor and Master Degrees in the field of Economics. Intellectual involvement and practical dabbling with the arts - drawing and painting as well as first exhibits - started during the last university years. An eighteen month stint at an aluminum foundry back in Brazil only confirmed that Bastian's future was not to be in the business world. But all's well that ends well: he has now been living and working as an artist in Hamburg/Germany for well over 25 years.
A fellow artist once used the term "painted philosophy" to describe Bastian's work. The addressee has yet to decide whether that was meant as a compliment or as a criticism. Be that as it may, the phrase sounds good and helps explain, at least in part, what the painter's intentions are. On a second level, separate from any statement...

Technically speaking, Bastian is self-taught as an artist. But introduction to the wide world of the arts started at an early age, as his parents (eclectic art collectors in their own way) made a point of confronting their children with all kinds of related events - exhibits, film festivals, Kabuki theatre, classical ballet, modern dance, candombl rituals, etc. - thus offering the young mind a very generous and varied palette of intellectual food. Sources of inspiration are therefore equally diverse. As a naive young man, the artist was probably influenced by the surrealists, later Pop Art, the Renaissance period and comics became more important. But deeper inspiration actually comes from other art forms, be these film, music and literature, where attitudes and ways of reflecting on individual and social life find a way of permeating into the artist's work, albeit in a circuitous way. And, last but not least, one should never underestimate the bizarre and beautiful world that surrounds us. Respective results have been exhibited in Germany and Brazil on a fairly regular basis in the course of the last twenty years.,

Exhibition in Galerie no 3
Schröderstr. 3
10115 Berlin
From 4th to 13th August 2016
www.galerieno3@com