It’s me Justine again, sharing my second post on Mighty Optical Illusions website. You’d think that being an illusionist would be enough for any artistic person who enjoys tweaking reality. But Georges Rousse, Paris artist born 2 years after the end of The Second World War, has taken it a step further. He is creating illusions of an illusion!
Back in the eighties, Rousse started out as an ordinary laboratory photographer, but then moved on and began taking photographs of vacant car parks, empty roads and condemned buildings.
After a while an idea hit him, so he started painting figures of people on walls of these buildings, and then photographed these. Later on, he switched from figures to illusory shapes. Soon he grew tired of all this, and began superimposing photographs on spaces, realities on other realities.
I find Rousse’s combination of photography and illusions, combined with installation art somewhat confusing – perhaps annoying even. It’s impossible to really know what you are seeing ,ever! I’m not sure I would enjoy any of his works hanging from my walls…
Take the above photo for example. At first glance it looks as if one is looking at the scene through a circular filter. A closer look reveals that the shapes in the circle appear to be entirely separated from their background, as if an unrelated photograph has been superimposed on the area behind.
Nothing in the “normal” part of the area lines up with a single part in the white photo. I don’t know about you, but I feel cheated by this kind of artifice. My eyes want the circular part to fit into the main picture so much, but it just won’t! You may find more of Rousse’s work below:
