Guillaume Vandame (b. 1991, New York) is a French-American artist working across media. In recent artworks, Vandame’s practice has focused on the universal theme of love and its manifestations through sculptural installations, assemblage, digital painting, drawing, performance, conceptual art, language, and video. Vandame is interested in the body as a medium, vehicle, and tool for expression focusing on issues ranging from gender identity, sexuality, queerness, and desire. There is a push and pull between the image and how we codify or occupy space, considering themes such as peace, love, and world building. 

 

At the age of 25, Vandame began his series Lovers (2017-2020), creating digital drawings made on his iPhone and printed on canvas as unique digital paintings. The artworks are bold, direct, and vibrant, full of saturated colors such as scarlet reds, indigo blues, canary yellows, and violet purples alongside bright oranges, hot pink, and fluorescent green. Drawing inspiration from Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism, the style is quick and immediate, composed of delicate lines and crude marks outlining the human body, and thick washes of color to create a horizon or landscape, much like a mirage or a flashback, sometimes revealing new colors and a new light.

 

His exhibitions and projects often include live events, collaborative elements such as artist books or poetry, and interactive performances inspired by the Happenings of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as taking inspiration from the psychadelic film “Casino Royale” (1967). Vandame ultimately seeks to create a contemporary aesthetic and social project which speaks to love, liberation, and equality, as much as the transformation of self towards beauty, oneness, and the sublime.

 

Recent institutional festivals, group and solo exhibitions include the 10th and 11th editions of Sculpture in the City, Leadenhall Market, City of London, London, England between 2021 and 2023;  CIRCA X Dazed Class of 2022 (with Brody Mace-Hopkins): Piccadilly Lights, London, England, Berlin, Germany, Seoul, South Korea, and Melbourne, Australia; Nocturnal Creatures 2019, in partnership with Whitechapel Gallery, London and Sculpture in the City, London; fig-2 curated by Fatos Ustek at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London in September 2015 (with Josh Wright, Monster Chetwynd, Francesca Steele, Adham Faramawy, and Karimah Ashadu.) His interest with community engagement and audience participation continued with institutional residencies including Photofusion, Brixton, Open House 2019-2020 at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, and Union Chapel, London between 2020 and 2021.  His work and projects have been featured on The Art Newspaper, Elephant, LGBTQ Nation, Time Out London, Fad Magazine, Hyperallergic, and It's Nice That, among other platforms and media.