This isn’t a conventional art exhibition in any sense. You won’t find straight-laced traditional watercolours, oils or charcoal drawings here – the artworks currently on display in Opera Gallery’s latest show, Cutting Edge, are compositions made mostly of LED lights, lenticular prints and slyly placed mirrors.
What’s a lenticular print, you ask. It’s a technique that combines a few images to create the effect of a moving picture. As you walk towards a lenticular art piece or change your viewing angle, the images appear to move and meld together.
It’s a technique frequently used by two of the artists featured in this exhibition – Korean artist Bae Joon Sung and Italian artist Umberto Ciceri.
In Ciceri’s Magic Spin No.629 (above), the ballerina twirls a full circle as the viewer moves from left to right. In some of his other works, such as Pupil 504 (below), concentric circles shift as the viewer approaches, creating an illusion of depth.
Bae’s work tends towards the tongue-in-cheek. What looks like a collection of classical oils in his piece The Frames (below, part of the series The Costume of Painter) turns out to harbour an intruder in its midst – a lenticular (centre) that appears to be an oil painting but, as the viewing angle changes, the woman on the swing loses her clothes.
French artist Noart chooses to play with light and mirrors instead. The witty piece below, Gold Escape, is a safe that opens to reveal rows and rows of gold bars stretching into infinity – an effect the artist achieves with clever mirror placement and LED lights.
The optical-illusion nature of these pieces means you really have to see them live to appreciate them fully. Head down to Opera Gallery this long weekend – the exhibition ends August 16. #04-15 Ion Orchard, tel: 6735-2618.
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