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.