Not Vital Monk Portrait, 2016

Not Vital’s art is often inspired by his travels and nomadic lifestyle. His Monk Portraits series (2016) was painted following a trip to the ancient capital of Laos, Luang Prabang, where the artist encountered monks daily while walking the streets. The portrait is painted on the saffron orange textile used to make the monks’ robes, creating a luminous background against which the grey head floats like an orb. The minimalism of the anonymous, featureless face suggests the asceticism of a monastic lifestyle, with the unpainted areas directing the viewer’s attention away from searching for identifying details and onto the relationship between form and space. As Vital describes, ‘The void or the unpainted areas on my canvases are by no means empty. They only represent a certain uncertainty.’