Bastiaan van Stenis
(1981 -)
Bastiaan Stenis was born in 1981 in Cape Town. He is a self-taught Post-Apartheid South African artist. Van Stenis is a descendant of the renowned 19th Century English painter John Thomas Baines, and is also half Dutch.
Van Stenis grew up in Cape Town and was schooled there, after he matriculated he worked for a bit as a furniture designer, and then went on to work at a mosaic company. In 2001 he decided to fully dedicate himself to painting.
“What drives me is the process, the creating, and the creation itself is just another stop on the way”. His work has been described as having abstract, surreal and expressionistic themes, which have also been criticized as provocative and unorthodox. Van Stenis has been seen to use a diverse range of tools and mediums to create his work, they include paint, cloth, wax, hair, glues and collage. He has also done other projects which include sculptural forms and compositions of music.
Van Stenis describes the areas of inspiration as coming from many things: objects, people, animation, culture, politics, personalities, and music.
His first solo exhibition was in 2005 and since then he has had group and solo shows each year.
Bastiaans works have been acquired by numerous important private collectors both locally and internationally including, among others, Queen Rania of Jordan.
Exhibitions:
2004 – Figurescaping, Veo Gallery, Cape Town
2005 – Group exhibition, Veo Gallery, Cape Town; Solo exhibition, Red the Gallery, Cape Town;
Group exhibition, Hout Bay Gallery, Cape Town
2006 – Solo exhibition, Veo Gallery, Cape Town; Group exhibition, Hout Bay Gallery, Cape Town
2007 – Group show. Gerard Cloete Gallery, Cape Town; Solo exhibition, Gerard Cloete Gallery,
Cape Town; Group exhibition, Red the Gallery, Cape Town
2008 – Group show, Hout Bay Gallery, Cape Town; First solo exhibition, Rossouw Modern Gallery,
Groot Constantia
2009 – Studio exhibition, combination work by Bastiaan Van Stenis and Gerard Cloete
2009/2010 – GODOG, solo exhibition, Rossouw Modern Art Gallery, Groot Constantia
2013 – van Stenis holds his first international exhibition at Dejavu Gallery in Son, Holland.
2014 – He opened a studio in Germany, in which he has spent many months working