VANTA - Acedia

“Acedia” (2026)
Oil on canvas
175 x 140 cm

A male face surfaces from deep red - half visible, half consumed by the color that surrounds it. Carved from a single red oil foundation through careful paint removal, the features carry the weight and stillness of ancient sculpture, as though uncovered rather than created. One eye holds its focus directly on the viewer, steady and unflinching, while the rest of the face dissolves back into the red from which it came.

That single eye becomes the entire gravity of the work. VANTA has used the removal technique to achieve a sculptural quality in the visible half - the brow, the line of the nose, the structure beneath skin - rendered with the cool precision of stone while remaining entirely within the warmth of red. Represented by S-Gallery and available on Catawiki. The half that remains hidden is not absent but implied, the darkness completing what removal began.

Acedia - the ancient concept of listless spiritual weight - finds its form here in a gaze that watches without urgency, present but unmoving. The partial face neither invites nor refuses. It simply holds.

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.