Nils Vandevenne graduated from Villa Arson and the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2021. He lives and works in Paris. A recipient of the CAMUS Paris, Ville Jardin project from the French Ministry of Culture, in collaboration with Rayan Yasmineh, he was a resident artist at Hangar Y in Meudon in 2022 and at the Fonds de Dotation encore ! in La Rochelle in 2023.
Rather than painting, Nils Vandevenne seeks to un-paint, removing material from the surface of the canvas. This act of alteration leaves only a thin layer of paint behind—a negative form. Color is torn away by the tool, allowing materials to resurface and enter into dialogue and confrontation with the object’s final state of life. This process operates as a form of revelation. As he alters the surface, all the stratifications of the object’s former life emerge. It is an animal, instinctive gesture. The artist thus engages in a process of excavation—searching, probing, and ultimately recovering a material history of the support’s life, or of what it once was.