OLIVIER RATSI
The artwork
Perspicere, square 1.1
2015
Artwork : 20x20x20cm; base : 30x30x100cm
Polycarbonate
Unique piece
Courtesy of Galerie Charlot
Perspicere, from the Latin “to look at closely”, “to examine carefully”, or “to look through”, is a project that once again employs the technique of anamorphosis, but this time using light as the catalyst.
The project aims, through its sculptures, to give a tangible form to the viewer’s gaze.
A direct nod to the Quattrocento’s conical codes of perspective – themselves an homage to Euclid’s theory that rays travelled directly from the beholder’s eye to the object beheld – Perspicere looks to make manifest that mental pyramid made up of points, lines, and surfaces, that was theorised by the artists of Renaissance Italy (Alberti, Brunelleschi) and which defines what we call in perspective terms the “vanishing point.”
In Perspicere, an alignment is created between the light emanating from the sculptures and the eyes of the viewer, leading to an informative reading about both the object and how we perceive it.
The artist
Olivier Ratsi’s work presents objective reality, time, space and matter as a series of intangible informative notions.
Focusing on the experience of reality and its representations, as well as the perception of space, he conceives works that encourage the viewer to question his or her own interpretation of what is real. As part of his work process, Olivier Ratsi creates systems that deconstruct our spatio-temporal reference points, often using the technique of anamorphosis, developed during his research. Making a break with objective reality, Olivier Ratsi’s works are not specifically aimed to unleash emotions or to perturb the senses, but rather to work as a catalyst for different points of view and cultural and psychological references. As such, the viewer is not deprived of his own subjective capacity to reconstruct/reconstitute reality. Instead, he is invited to make up his own mind and to experience the works through his own personal reactions.
Olivier Ratsi is co-founder and former of Antivj Label.