VANTA - Veil V - NO RESERVE
03
days
06
hours
43
minutes
18
seconds
Current bid
€ 22
No reserve price
Expert
Selected by Maurizio Buquicchio
Holds a master's degree in film and visual arts; experienced curator, writer, and researcher.
Gallery Estimate € 2,300 - € 2,800
 | €22 | |
|---|---|---|
 | €19 |
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VANTA, Veil V - NO RESERVE, an original hand-signed contemporary mixed‑media painting from Austria, 140 × 100 cm, created in 2020+, sold direct from the artist, delivered unframed and rolled in a tube.
AI-assisted summary
Description from the seller
Delayed shipping due to holiday for this object
estimated shipping date 21.08
Veil
Veil is a painting series exploring the threshold where a figure begins to dissolve into light — portraits in which the face is softened almost past recognition, the features loosened into a quiet field of tone, while the hair, shoulders, and clothing hold just enough form to suggest a presence. Each work sits somewhere between portrait and atmosphere, as if the sitter were viewed through breath on glass, or held in the moment just before memory sharpens into a clear image.
The series draws on Gerhard Richter's blurred photo-paintings — particularly the softness of Betty and his portrait work — as well as the quiet, spectral figures of Luc Tuymans, the atmospheric portraits of Marlene Dumas, the hazed intimacy of Michaël Borremans, and the diffused, almost photographic softness of Vilhelm Hammershøi's interiors. Something of Bill Viola's slow, luminous video portraits also sits in the background — a shared interest in the human presence caught at the edge of visibility.
Veil extends a preoccupation that runs through my earlier gradient and light series — First Light, Aura, Lumen, Flare — where color and radiance are the subject; here, that same soft luminosity is turned toward the figure, and the face becomes another kind of light source.
Each painting begins with a photograph. The image is worked digitally, its color range progressively reduced until only a handful of tones remain — a simplified, almost vectorized version of the original, in which the figure is stripped down to a small vocabulary of flat color fields. This reduced image becomes the working blueprint. It is projected onto the canvas, the fields carefully outlined, and each area then filled by hand with acrylic on cotton — extremely thin, retarder fluids are added to delay the drying process, layered passes that build the tones gradually. Once the flat fields are in place, the surface is worked over: brushed, softened, and blurred through many patient, near-transparent layers, with additional passes laid down by airbrush where the transitions need to become truly weightless.
The blur is not applied as an effect but painted into being, every soft edge the result of slow reworking, of pulling forms just barely into and out of focus. A protective varnish finishes each work, deepening the surface and letting the figure recede a little further into it.
Veil is a series about the softness of presence — the way a face can slip in and out of clarity, and the quiet space between seeing someone and only sensing that they are there.
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 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 2-4 cm thick.
Disclaimer:
Process photos included in the listing show studies and works in progress, as well as close up photos of showing the structure of the canvas.
Seller's Story
VANTA is a young Austrian artist whose practice is defined less by a signature subject than by a restless, almost obsessive drive to experiment across mediums.
Painting, mixed media, sculptural experiments, and material tests all move through the studio in parallel — each new series arriving as the answer to a specific question about how far an idea can be pushed before it becomes something else entirely.
Based in Vienna, VANTA has exhibited at some of the city's most prominent contemporary art events, including Viennacontemporary and the Parallel Vienna art fair, alongside international presentations at Budapest Contemporary and Contemporary Istanbul.
Stylistically the work refuses to sit still: bold, high-contrast black-and-white abstraction sits alongside figurative anatomical oil paintings, quiet color field compositions, atmospheric gradients, and fluid ink works — bodies of work that at first glance appear to belong to different artists entirely, yet share a common thread: the pursuit of a very specific image held in the mind, and the search for the exact material process that will bring it into the world.
Rather than settling into a recognizable style, VANTA treats each series as its own self-contained inquiry. One body of work might explore the threshold where pigment dissolves into pure luminosity; another might build dense fields of horizontal color through hand-cut stencils and layered acrylic; another might turn toward the human figure in oil, or dissolve into the loose, unpredictable gestures of ink.
What binds them is the process itself — the discipline of chasing an idea from imagination toward surface, and the willingness to invent whatever technique that pursuit demands.
At the center of the practice is a simple, stubborn question: how close can a made object come to the thing first pictured in the mind? Each series is another attempt at an answer.
Delayed shipping due to holiday for this object
estimated shipping date 21.08
Veil
Veil is a painting series exploring the threshold where a figure begins to dissolve into light — portraits in which the face is softened almost past recognition, the features loosened into a quiet field of tone, while the hair, shoulders, and clothing hold just enough form to suggest a presence. Each work sits somewhere between portrait and atmosphere, as if the sitter were viewed through breath on glass, or held in the moment just before memory sharpens into a clear image.
The series draws on Gerhard Richter's blurred photo-paintings — particularly the softness of Betty and his portrait work — as well as the quiet, spectral figures of Luc Tuymans, the atmospheric portraits of Marlene Dumas, the hazed intimacy of Michaël Borremans, and the diffused, almost photographic softness of Vilhelm Hammershøi's interiors. Something of Bill Viola's slow, luminous video portraits also sits in the background — a shared interest in the human presence caught at the edge of visibility.
Veil extends a preoccupation that runs through my earlier gradient and light series — First Light, Aura, Lumen, Flare — where color and radiance are the subject; here, that same soft luminosity is turned toward the figure, and the face becomes another kind of light source.
Each painting begins with a photograph. The image is worked digitally, its color range progressively reduced until only a handful of tones remain — a simplified, almost vectorized version of the original, in which the figure is stripped down to a small vocabulary of flat color fields. This reduced image becomes the working blueprint. It is projected onto the canvas, the fields carefully outlined, and each area then filled by hand with acrylic on cotton — extremely thin, retarder fluids are added to delay the drying process, layered passes that build the tones gradually. Once the flat fields are in place, the surface is worked over: brushed, softened, and blurred through many patient, near-transparent layers, with additional passes laid down by airbrush where the transitions need to become truly weightless.
The blur is not applied as an effect but painted into being, every soft edge the result of slow reworking, of pulling forms just barely into and out of focus. A protective varnish finishes each work, deepening the surface and letting the figure recede a little further into it.
Veil is a series about the softness of presence — the way a face can slip in and out of clarity, and the quiet space between seeing someone and only sensing that they are there.
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 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 2-4 cm thick.
Disclaimer:
Process photos included in the listing show studies and works in progress, as well as close up photos of showing the structure of the canvas.
Seller's Story
VANTA is a young Austrian artist whose practice is defined less by a signature subject than by a restless, almost obsessive drive to experiment across mediums.
Painting, mixed media, sculptural experiments, and material tests all move through the studio in parallel — each new series arriving as the answer to a specific question about how far an idea can be pushed before it becomes something else entirely.
Based in Vienna, VANTA has exhibited at some of the city's most prominent contemporary art events, including Viennacontemporary and the Parallel Vienna art fair, alongside international presentations at Budapest Contemporary and Contemporary Istanbul.
Stylistically the work refuses to sit still: bold, high-contrast black-and-white abstraction sits alongside figurative anatomical oil paintings, quiet color field compositions, atmospheric gradients, and fluid ink works — bodies of work that at first glance appear to belong to different artists entirely, yet share a common thread: the pursuit of a very specific image held in the mind, and the search for the exact material process that will bring it into the world.
Rather than settling into a recognizable style, VANTA treats each series as its own self-contained inquiry. One body of work might explore the threshold where pigment dissolves into pure luminosity; another might build dense fields of horizontal color through hand-cut stencils and layered acrylic; another might turn toward the human figure in oil, or dissolve into the loose, unpredictable gestures of ink.
What binds them is the process itself — the discipline of chasing an idea from imagination toward surface, and the willingness to invent whatever technique that pursuit demands.
At the center of the practice is a simple, stubborn question: how close can a made object come to the thing first pictured in the mind? Each series is another attempt at an answer.
Details
Artist
VANTA
Sold with frame
No
Sold by
Direct from the artist
Edition
Original
Title of artwork
Veil V - NO RESERVE
Technique
Mixed media
Signature
Hand signed
Country of origin
Austria
Condition
Excellent condition
Height
140 cm
Width
100 cm
Style
Contemporary
Period
2020+
