GÉRARD BAKNER

As a magician and lover of mathematics, Gérard Bakner has immersed himself for a few years in art history to discover the existing relationships with magic and more particularly to pursue research about form related to geometric art and kinetic art.

‘The truth is unique. The lie is multiple. The game is not equal.’

— Jean-François Deniau.

Do you really think you perceive reality? Do your eyes deceive you? Does what we perceive and interpret seems to be anything other than reality? Isn’t your brain influenced by visible imagery and invisible illusions? Bakner disrupts our perception by opening the door to a world between reality and virtuality.

Influenced by masters of modern and contemporary art, Gérard Bakner interprets their thoughts and the optical effect in art in his own way. The numerous representations of the martyr of Saint Sebastian, riddled with arrows, question the Poggendorff effect, which is the illusion of continuous lines. Kanisza’s motif gives the illusion that a subjective figure appears to be in front of the other figures, partly hiding them from our view. E. Lingelbach’s scintillating grids, variants of Hermann’s grid, show/disappear phantom dots and lines echoing to Pierre Soulages’ painting, Outrenoir. The result of his finest discovery in optical art is that this illusion is constructed by our brain turning visible lines into moving non-existent virtual lines.

Through the use of digital tools, Bakner brings a new pictorial approach and wishes to democratize the marital relationship between art and magic. Through the artist’s vision, he brings the public to discover another form of visual interpretation which is complementary and commonly used. The artist’s perception is not meant to be learned or understood by the viewer but to show us other potential existing aspects of reality.