Arne Bastien’s work shows a hostile attitude towards the image. In his paintings the subject is always a field of tension, an activity, a disturbance or a division. The gaze is set in motion by these disturbances. By focusing on different points, through compositional splits and a sometimes slow and then rhythmic, nervous brushwork, it becomes impossible to reduce the work to a manageable, consumable image. The gripping gaze is discarded and a binding look takes over.
The unfinished, the doubt, the brutal search and an intelligent resistance to the reducing effect of images, produce an extremely fascinating and necessarily heterogeneous oeuvre. [Vincent Geyskens]