VASHKA - VAIN - 1/1

VAIN is a unique mixed-media work on canvas created by VASHKA in Lyon, France. The work explores the construction of appearance and the distance that can emerge between the image we present and the person behind it. We learn how to be looked at how to appear composed, desirable and untouched. Eventually, maintaining the image can become easier than revealing what exists beneath it. This psychological tension lies at the centre of VASHKA’s artistic language. The project explores human behaviour, identity and the unspoken through figures that remain attractive and familiar at first glance, yet become increasingly difficult to read the longer they are observed. VAIN brings together two opposing visual languages. The restraint, femininity and controlled elegance associated with luxury and high-fashion imagery meet a more punk, marginal and non-conforming attitude. VASHKA uses the codes of refinement and desirability not as an end in themselves, but as a surface beneath which something more unstable can emerge. In VAIN, the carefully composed beauty portrait is confronted with subtly impossible facial proportions, an ambiguous expression and a distant gaze. The figure remains desirable, yet something feels displaced. Beauty becomes both a means of attraction and a form of concealment. The original concept and artistic direction were developed by VASHKA. The visual was created and refined using artificial intelligence as part of the digital creative process, before being printed, manually cut and assembled, and applied to canvas. The work was then physically altered by hand. The hair was reworked with acrylic paint, the edges of the canvas were hand-painted, and the finished piece received a glossy acrylic protective coating. These interventions make this physical version of VAIN a unique work. “You see me. That doesn’t mean you know me.” VASHKA — VAIN 2026 30 × 24 cm Mixed media on canvas — digital print, acrylic paint and glossy acrylic finish Unique work — 1/1 Signed on the reverse VASHKA/ Certificate of authenticity included Created in Lyon, France

Estimate:$337.11

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