image: Janna Bathoorn

Tessera Studio is a high-skill atelier that transforms public-domain art imagery into large-scale, handcrafted mosaics. Each work is built from carefully cut fragments of vintage publications, recomposed into autonomous compositions that read as a unified image from a distance and reveal layers of cultural memory and texture up close.

Tessera Studio is founded by Volken de Vlas (Dokkum, 1975), visual artist educated at the Academy of Fine Arts, Academie Minerva in Groningen and builds on more than twenty years of visual and material exploration across art, design and spatial practice.

The studio produces autonomous works as well as collaborative projects, engaging with galleries, architects and cultural partners. Across contexts, the focus remains the same: creating visual works that carry their own presence and invite sustained looking.

The art of looking twice.

Each work is physically constructed from fragments sourced from vintage art prints of works in the public domain, salvaged from waste streams and discarded books. These prints are cut into small tiles and recomposed one by one into layered visual compositions.

The process is labour-intensive. While the source material originates from printed imagery, the final work is fully physical, tactile and materially present.

From a distance, the image reads as a unified whole. Up close, individual fragments reveal texture, colour variation and traces of their origin.