PIERMARQ* is pleased to present Head Games, a group show featuring international artists Cosimo Casoni, Ritsart Gobyn, Nina Radonja, Thérèse Mulgrew, Jeremy Shockley, Adam Parker Smith and Emily Wolfe, to explore the use the visual techniques of trompe l’oeil, photorealism, storytelling and illusion to trick the viewer.
‘Head Games’ recalls the Greek myth of Zeuxis and Parrhasius, surrounding a competition between the two rival painters. It is said that the grapes painted by Zeuxis were so realistic that birds saw the image and attempted to eat them. Shortly after he went to view Parrhasius painting, and asked that the curtain be lifted so he could look at the image only to discover that the curtain was itself the painting. Zeuxis acknowledged his defeat, because while he had tricked birds the curtain of Parrhasuis had deceived a man and fellow artist.
French for ‘deceive the eye’ trompe l’oeil is a term for a highly realistic optical illusion of three dimensional space on a two dimensional surface to manipulate the perception of space as real. Since the Renaissance fascination with perspective, artists have been incorporating trompe l’oeil elements such as a painted fly that appears to be sitting on the painting's frame, a piece of paper might appear to be attached to a board, or a person appearing to be climbing out of the painting altogether. As art history progressed into Illusionism, Op Art and beyond, artists have continued to explore ways to fool the eye into a realm of perceived reality.
Today, advancements in virtual reality edge toward a metaverse where the physical world can be experienced in a three-dimensional Internet. Through the traditional tools of paint and sculpture, the artworks in this exhibition recall the myth of Zeuxis and Parrahasius, human’s persistent desire, ancient and contemporary, to use tools and technology to create the illusion of worlds within worlds - inviting the viewer to the boundary between the physical and painterly.
