Beneath the Surface I by Tayo Explore Mondoir Studio Medium: Oil and acrylics Dimensions: 120 x 140 cm Year: 2026 Price: $7000.00 USD Status: available A carefully rendered face is repeatedly covered, framed and interrupted by white planes, black gestures and architectural lines. Visibility becomes unstable: one eye meets the viewer while the other is almost erased. The work examines how identity is edited by expectation, memory and self-protection. What appears incomplete is not absent; it continues beneath the painted surface, resisting a single, finished reading. Why collect this work?A precisely modelled face is made partial by white planes, black passages and looping contours, turning concealment into the painting’s principal structure rather than a loss of imagery. The artist describes identity as fragmented and rebuilt across his practice. Here, that concern is concentrated in a portrait whose outward gaze persists despite repeated interruption.In the supplied photograph, one eye and the mouth remain sharply legible while the other eye disappears beneath pale paint. Angular bands press against broad circular gestures, setting facial recognition against competing systems of order.The catalogued oil and acrylic medium permits a contrast between gradual tonal modelling and abrupt, opaque-looking marks. At 120 by 140 cm, according to the catalogue, these interruptions operate near bodily scale.Encountered alongside conventional portraiture, the painting can test how little visual information is needed for a face to retain presence, and how abstraction may actively regulate recognition. About the ArtistTayo Tayo is an artist on Mondoir Studio. Artistic discipline: painting. Based in Ufa, RU. Nationality: Nigerian My paintings begin with the face and the body, but I am less interested in likeness than in what pressure reveals.
