Optical Drops’ History

Abstractions

Early Works

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Optical Drops

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.

History of the Optical Drops

“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!

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 White/Red/Black, 2015

50 x 50 cm, Acrylic on canvas

Private Collection

Abstractions

"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.

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 II, 2012

50 x 61 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

Mazes

Maze Blue/Red & Gold, 2023

20 x 20 cm, Acrylic on canvas

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 )

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.

www.artistsinresidencetv.com

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