Young Woman by Rob Elphinstone

Description

Title: Young woman. Tecnique:Light sculpture with plaster cast and painting on canvas, cm 30 x 40 x 15. Signed. Unique … more Title: Young woman. Tecnique:Light sculpture with plaster cast and painting on canvas, cm 30 x 40 x 15. Signed. Unique piece.

Portrait of a Young Woman: Reverse Perspective

To see the illusion, walk from side to side (about 3m away) while looking at the portrait. Bending down and stretching will result in the head nodding.

“Young Woman” is similar to one of 9 presented in an installation presented at the Manege Contemporary Art Museum in St. Petersburg Russia for the Biennial “DIALOGUES” 2007 exhibition. It challenges the observer with an image that confuses the perception of what is real. Inspired by the 14th century concept of reverse (Byzantine) perspective where the observer is given the omniscient viewpoint of the vanishing point, I have used our perceptual preference for convex objects to create a holographic-like portrait that move along with the observer. This form of perspective was studied by Ernst Mach and is commonly associated with the "reversible open book" illusion and the hollow mask illusion. The observer, even knowing the source of the illusion, nevertheless experiences an instinctive desire to see a convex “face”. This illusion is reinforced as the observer moves. The parallax (used in astronomy to derive distances in stars and that we use to understand the shape of objects) is reversed in this exhibit and so we are fooled once again and the portrait faces move in response to our motion. The portrait of the young woman coming out of the surface captures the imagination and creates a paradox for the mind to deal with. My desire in art is to create effects that mimic the actual in nature rather than reproduce photographic quality images or emotional states. My art reflects the belief that our senses reveal only a shadow of what we truly experience. The term "Actualism art" is used to distinguish this art form from the emotionally based "expressionism" trend. Reality is more than just the sum our emotional impressions and the sense detection of an external scene. The realism art discipline attempts to capture the latter and expressionism the former. My version of Actualist art allows that the observer can interpret the "actual" and create works that capture the essence of the observed in a fundamental way. (Rob Elphinstone). less