David Souto

I stumbled recently upon the work of the Swiss artist Felice Varini, whose work is mainly scattered in France (you may find one near your area by looking at his portfolio in Google maps). His art is especially interesting among the various popular variations of the trompe l'oeil. In paintings, the artist uses principally the rules of perspective to create the illusion of a three-dimensional subject in the world (as with 'Escaping criticism' by Pere Borrell del Caso), which is necessarily optimal for a particular point of view.

Varini depicts often simple geometric shapes that come into a bi-dimensional 'gestalt' when viewed from a single viewpoint. Then, surfaces that in reality extend in three dimensions, are perceptually flattened, which is quite the opposite effect from what we expect of a trompe l'oeil. Because from this particular point of view the shape has no belonging to any object out there, they lie in a different layer than their medium, as if they originate in the eye of the beholder or as strangely palpable projections.
Some of the forms are as simple as a line that runs across the four walls of a plaza, cutting the visual space in two when viewed from its center; or a simple ellipse shown below.

Some of his work takes extraordinary proportions, as in Saint-Etienne, in France, shown below. He applies the usual stencil projection technique to paint concentric circles. As a result the buildings appear to warp around the center of the composition.

"The job of any sensory system is to create objects in the world out of the incoming proximal stimulus energy” (Stephen Handel in Perceptual Coherence, OUP). 

Most of  the time objects are correctly recognized without effort, however artful arrangements can reveal the fact that many solutions can arise from the same projection on the retina (the "proximal stimulus energy"). The London artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster made quite an impressive demonstration of this principle by creating a huge gap between the projection and the object that generates it (cf. image below). Even if no different from ombromanie, the art of creating images from hand shadows, it remains impressive.

When the heap of garbage is illuminated from one side we see a couple back to back, where there should only be some accidental organization.
At first I thought of it as a rather pessimistic version of Plato's allegory of the cave. The intention was clearly different though. The rubbish was produced by the artists consumption, who are thus doubly reflected by it.