Bastek

His works are mainly visible on the walls of the French capital “Paris”. Generally in height, and this, since 2009. It is also found in the rest of France: Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, Arles, Orléans, Arbois… But also in the rest of the globe, especially in Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Greece, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Indonesia, India, Kenya and Costa Rica.

He draws his inspiration from everyday life, from urban life, but also from the comic strip, manga and comic culture of which he is passionate. The result is a style mixing abstract and figurative based on its pattern of “bubbles“.

This is a deliberately oversimplified representation of Man, erasing any distinctive sign (gender, disability, ethnic origin, belonging to a cultural group, etc.) that could be a potential source of misunderstandings, divisions, etc. Racism, Homophobia … have no place in its production, except to denounce them!

The accumulation of its identical motifs also refers to a crowd of individuals, representative of an idealized society which would be nothing but equality, peace and harmony. Because in the absence of a visible difference, in the end. We are all identical in our nature as human beings.

His first works marked him. It is after only a few months/years that he develops his work. Reducing the importance of the mass to put its forms in situations. Sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic or using it to make portraits whether they are strangers, celebrities (Gainsbourg, Césaria Evora, Nelson Mandela, Bob Marley…) or even fictional characters (Les Blagues de toto, The Legendaries, Hellboy, V for Vendetta, Homer Simpson…).

Through his paintings directly stuck in the street, he takes literally the well-known expression of the world of Street art defining the street as an “open-air gallery”.

He now happens to abandon his little characters for stencil, but he always ends up coming back to them and… putting them in a situation, sharing them giving them the floor (…), making them evolve and even traveling (…) thus offering to the walls sadly neglected by the globe and to distracted passers-by a small dose of colors and poetry without borders!

In 10 years of activity, her accumulation of “bubbles” have never left her. Initially thought of as human beings reduced to their most basic form in order to advocate equality and harmony in society, they finally became his signature over time.