Victor Man 

Umbra Vitae, 2025

We are pleased to present a new print by Victor Man, created on the occasion of his first solo exhibition with David Zwirner, The Absence That We Are, at the gallery’s London location. The etching, available in a limited edition of 15, relates to a self-portrait featured in the exhibition.

In this work, we see a person in a person in a person, a cascade of masks entangled into one another, almost like the chain of relations in which life’s path unfolds. The print’s rich shadows and highlights capture the luminosity present in the related painting, dated 2024–2025. Both works bear the title Umbra Vitae, a phrase which could be loosely translated to “shadow of life.” Each exemplifies the artist’s use of self-portraiture as an autoreflective testimony of the individual’s journey through time, deeply intimate yet divorced from self-infatuation.

Victor Man lives and works in Europe. Marked by an elegant spareness and a dark and atmospheric palette, the artist’s work encompasses portraits of individuals from his milieu, as well as symbolically laden, melancholic scenes. He joined David Zwirner Gallery in 2024.