VANTA - Stratum

“Stratum” (2025)
Oil on canvas
175 x 140 cm

Multiple faces emerge from deep vivid dark blue oil paint - mask-like beings surfacing from the uniform foundation through careful, strategic removal. VANTA has worked with a single shade of blue, creating all variations in tone through the amount of paint removed rather than mixing different colors. Where more pigment has been taken away, lighter areas define features and contours. Where less has been disturbed, shadows and depth remain.

The faces overlap and intersect across the canvas, creating a layered composition where one visage bleeds into another. Represented by S-Gallery and available on Catawiki, this piece demonstrates remarkable control - each face maintains its own identity and character despite sharing the same blue spectrum and occupying interconnected space. The removal techniques - scratching, wiping, etching, dissolving - leave subtle traces that add texture to the revealed forms.

The substantial format allows this crowd of emerging beings to develop without crowding. They float at different depths within the blue field, some more fully revealed than others, creating a sense of figures suspended in darkness or pushing through from some other realm into visibility.

Shipping:
The work is delivered without a frame (professional packaging, rolled in a tube). it can easily be restretched by a professional or on your own, this is also cheaper then the otherwise increased cost of shipping when sending paintings of this size stretched

The measurements indicated are those of the painting stretched and mounted on a frame (The actual
measurements of the canvas are larger to allow it to be mounted on a frame 2-4cm thick.