Optical Drops
(Vladimir de Vaumas in front of “Optical Drop Black & White”, 2015)
Discovering the Art of Optical Drops
Parisian artist Vladimir de Vaumas is the founder of an innovative visual art concept known as Optical Drops. Blending techniques from dripping to tape art, along with influences from the kinetic and optical arts, Vladimir de Vaumas creates geometric, abstract, and lively forms.
His paintings inspire viewers to immerse themselves in the artwork, allowing their imagination to run wild, similar to a Rorschach test.
Optical Drop Red/Blue/Gold, 2022
20 x 20 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Optical Drop Black/Gold/Blue, 2021
20 x 20 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Optical Drop Silver/Gold/Red, 2021
20 x 20 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Optical Drop Black/Red/White, 2014
190 x 150 cm, Acrylic on wood
(Price on request)
Optical Drop Pink/Yellow/Red, 2023
20 x 20 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Optical Drop Blue/Red/Yellow, 2023
20 x 20 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Optical Drop Yellow/Orange/Blue, 2023
20 x 20 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Multicolor Optical Drop, 2022
50 x 50 cm, Acrylic on canvas
(Price on request)
Multiverse Optical Drop, 2022
50 x 50 cm, Acrylic on canvas
(Price on request)
Optical Drop Red/Yellow/Blue, 2022
20 x 20 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Optical Drop Blue/Red/Orange, 2022
20 x 20 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Optical Drop Blue/Orange/Yellow, 2022
20 x 20 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Optical Drop Black/Blue/Gold, 2015
50 x 50 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Optical Drop Red/Orange/Blue, 2021
50 x 50 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Optical Drop Black & White, 2015
100 x 100 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Optical Drop White/Red/Black, 2016
50 x 50 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Optical Drop Red/Blue/Red & Green, 2017
20 x 20 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Optical Drop Red/Black/White, 2018
100 x 100 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
History of the Optical Drops
Optical Drop Black/White/Red, 2011
81 x 66 cm, Acrylic and wax on canvas
Private Collection
“I was experiencing a lot with paints in my room. I transformed it into a real artist’s studio, much to my parents' dismay... All the walls were filled up with drawings, paintings, annotations, pictures of masterpieces of my favorite artists, and even mathematic formulas, to try to learn them!
One day, I made a huge paint above my door with big white, black and red circles. I really liked it! So, I started to replicate it on a canvas, because I wanted to go further in the experimentation. I had this idea of trying to mingle the three colors, but getting a little more messy!
I also was a nightclub photographer for a few years, and I enjoyed a lot the music, the bass of techno, but I always loved the lightening, the lasers and the stroboscope. They would leave this images in my head, like drops moving with the sound, and geometrical shapes waving on the drops created by the lights on my pupils.
I first tried to recreate the forms I was seeing on a canvas, and as for the drops, I used a lot of boiled wax that I sprayed from several meters high. I really liked the results! Nonetheless, it wasn’t exactly what I wanted. It was maybe too messy, and my floor still keeps the wax traces of this experience!
Going forward with the experimentation, I came up with a new way of making it. Instead of doing the drop of paint in last, I directly did it on a painted canvas. And from there, I applied tape to paint my geometrical shapes overall the drops. It is taking a bit of time to paint over the many drops, but the results are, in my opinion, just great!
Tâche Opticus Primus, 2011
46 x 38 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
From there, I could only improve it, as the rectangular format wasn’t exactly the most dynamic. I needed a new shape that would conduct an impression of falling, like an optical illusion. It is why, since then, I would only do square forms on my drops. And the drops would become more and more complex to paint.
As far as I am concerned, creation should take a lot of time and a little bit of pain to become true art. It is why I never tire of creating my Optical Drops. For instance, a 20 x 20 cm canvas takes me around two to three weeks to create, but a one square meter canvas takes over three months. And the biggest I have ever done, about 150 x 200 cm, took me over two years!
As to explain the true meaning of these Optical Drops, a phrase came to me over the year: “The chaos of the world faced with man's pragmatism”. It explains quite well a feeling that has overcome me. Born in 1992, I always felt a little bit anxious about climate change, like powerless in front of what is happening around the world... And I think my paintings are both violent, like climate changes and pollution, and calming, thanks to my hand, which represents humanity at work. They show something we can’t control, the drops, and what can be done to curb the problem, the shapes over it, like a last hope for human kind”.
Vladimir de Vaumas
Optical Drop Gold/Red/Blue, 2023
100 x 100 cm, Acrylic on canvas
(Price on request)
Optical Drop White & Black, 2021
50 x 50 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Optical Drop White/Red/Black, 2015
50 x 50 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Abstractions
(Artist Tolkyn Sakbayeva with Vladimir de Vaumas
in front of “For a better world”, 2015
50 x 50 cm, Acrylic on canvas - Private Collection)
"Abstractions", a series of works influenced by renowned artists
Since 2015, French painter Vladimir de Vaumas has been creating "Abstractions," a series of pieces that draw inspiration from optical masters like Victor Vasarely, Yvaral, Alexander Calder, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Rafael Soto, or Bridget Riley, as well as the works of Miró, Malevich, Delaunay, and others.
Parental Diptyque, 2015
70 x 35 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Travel on Mars, 2023
50 x 50 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Abstraction Gold & Blue, 2023
50 x 50 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Abstraction Blue, Red & Gold, 2023
50 x 50 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Abstraction Black & Orange, 2023, 100 x 25 cm, Acrylic on canvas
(Price on request)
Abstraction Blue & Orange, 2017
50 x 50 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Sunshine on me, 2023
50 x 50 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Two worlds, one Love, 2022
70 x 50 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Abstraction Blue, Red & White, 2016
50 x 50 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Abstraction Blue & Orange 2016
25 x 25 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Abstraction Blue & Orange, 2019
100 x 100 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Early Works
“Every artist needs a past to become one that matters in the future”
Kinetic Works
Vertigo I, 2011
60 x 40 cm, Acrylic on wood
Private Collection
Géometrie Infinie 2012
60 x 60 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Vertigo II, 2012
50 x 61 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Spirale, 2013
116 cm, Acrylic on wood
Private Collection
Triangulation I, 2012
30 x 30 cm, Acrylic on canvas
(Price on request)
Triangulation II, 2012
60 x 60 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Blue Carré Losange, 2014
60 x 60 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Red Carré Losange, 2014
40 x 60 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Abstraction of Colors Black, 2012
51 x 40 cm, Acrylic on wood
(Price on request)
Abstraction of Colors White, 2012
44 x 35 cm, Acrylic on wood
Private Collection
Fleur de Cube, 2012
50 x 61 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Illusion de Géometrie, 2012
80 x 80 cm, Acrylic on canvas
(Price on request)
15 P au Carré, 2012
65 x 55 cm, Acrylic on canvas
(Price on request)
Mazes
The Great Escape, 2015
190 x 120 cm, Acrylic on wood
(Price on request)
World’s Corners, 2014
80 x 80 cm, Acrylic on wood
Private Collection
Brain City, 2014
100 x 100 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Maze Red/Blue & Gold, 2023
20 x 20 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Maze Blue/Red & Gold, 2023
20 x 20 cm, Acrylic on canvas
Private Collection
Diptyque Spiralisant, 2012
61 x 61 x 15 cm, Acrylic on wood
Private Collection
Latest Projects
Mural in TULUM, Mexico, December 2023
The Four Elements, 2023
10 m, Aerosol on wall
Private Collection
About
Vladimir de Vaumas
Since his childhood, Vladimir de Vaumas has always been attracted to art. He actually inherited it from his parents, both journalists and art lovers. His house was filled with paintings, sculptures, pictures, art books and other curiosities, which inflated a true appetite for the arts.
For its fourteenth birthday, his father offered him a Rolleiflex, and from then, Vladimir would take pictures of all of its surroundings, notably during trips around the world. He even became a nightclub photographer for a few years, going to many Parisian clubs and meeting the underworld art and techno scenes. From his journeys in foreign countries, Vladimir published “The Beach Ecology”, a small photo-report of the state of Mexican beaches, long before the situation was so dramatic.
(Portrait of Vladimir de Vaumas by French Photographer François de Rivoyre, 2014 )
(Portrait of Vladimir de Vaumas by French Photographer François de Rivoyre, 2014 )
During his last year of high school, Vladimir came to hang out his camera to exchange it for brushes, and canvas. He found in painting a way to truly express himself through this medium.
Since then, as an autodidact, Vladimir experienced with many visual art techniques before finding a personal way of painting that had never been done before in the history of art. His series of Optical Drops and Abstractions are the fruit of a tedious and perseverant work along the years.
Also ensuing History of Art and Art Market studies at the EAC School of Paris (École des métiers de l'Art et de la Culture), Vladimir worked for international galleries as well as a journalist, notably collaborating with Art Media Agency, one of the largest press relay for the French art market.
After an Erasmus in Barcelona for a Master’s degree in Arts and Cultural Management, Vladimir worked for a few years for the art residency Espronceda, Institute of Art & Culture, engaging with contemporary art production and numerous artists in residence.
From this experience, Vladimir wrote a thesis on “The phenomenon of artists’ residencies: funding and evolution of commercial practices, could residencies play a role on the art market?”. The same year, he founded Artists In Residence Television, the first audiovisual network dedicated to art residencies.
(Portrait of Vladimir de Vaumas in front of
Two Worlds, One Love by French Photographer Gaël de Vaumas, 2022 )
For Sale
Optical Drop Black/Red/White, 2014
190 x 150 cm, Acrylic on wood
(Price on request)
Optical Drop Gold/Red/Blue, 2023
100 x 100 cm, Acrylic on canvas
(Price on request)
Multicolor Optical Drop, 2022
50 x 50 cm, Acrylic on canvas
(Price on request)
Multiverse Optical Drop, 2022
50 x 50 cm, Acrylic on canvas
(Price on request)
Abstraction Black & Orange, 2023, 100 x 25 cm, Acrylic on canvas
(Price on request)
Spirale, 2013
116 cm, Acrylic on wood
Private Collection
Triangulation I, 2012
30 x 30 cm, Acrylic on canvas
(Price on request)
Illusion de Géometrie, 2012
80 x 80 cm, Acrylic on canvas
(Price on request)
Abstraction of Colors Black, 2012
51 x 40 cm, Acrylic on wood
(Price on request)
15 P au Carré, 2012
65 x 55 cm, Acrylic on canvas
(Price on request)
The Great Escape, 2015
190 x 120 cm, Acrylic on wood
(Price on request)
Contact
(Portrait of Vladimir de Vaumas
by French Photographer JR, 2015 )
Vladimir de Vaumas
Paris, France
Phone : +33 781 866 394
Email : devaumasvladimir@gmail.com
Website : www.vladimirdevaumas.com