Vega mir. from Bach album 1973

Curator: My first impression? It feels like staring into the void, but a surprisingly… stylish void. Editor: Indeed! What you are experiencing is Vega mir. from Bach album, brought to us in 1973 by Victor Vasarely, created using acrylic paint. You are observing an illusion born from carefully calculated geometric forms. Curator: Illusion is the word. It's a flat surface pretending to be something else entirely. A sphere emerging, or perhaps sinking, depending on how my brain interprets it on any given day. There is something playful and unsettling about it. Editor: Vasarely masterfully employs principles of Op Art here, challenging our perception through precise arrangements and tonal contrasts. Note how the shift in the shapes and sizes of the circles creates a sense of depth and movement. Curator: It feels a little like music, the way each shape is a note in a strange composition. Vasarely mentioned Bach here – do you feel as if we can find harmony here, as if its a geometric rendition? Editor: It is less a harmonious resolution than an unresolved question. Bach sought the divine through order. Vasarely uses order to expose the fallibility of perception, the instability of seeing. The geometric rendition offers the tools and we decide what it means. Curator: So it is as if, he doesn't merely paint an image but a lens—we adjust our focus and understanding constantly as we watch, we start seeing! Is he attempting to give a unique experience with each eye? Editor: Absolutely. It exemplifies how formalism intertwines the material with the experiential. Every precise angle, every calibrated shadow, is geared towards altering not just what we see, but how we see. This all becomes the purpose of art—to question. Curator: I will admit, I came here searching for a stable meaning but instead have come to discover a painting about the very absence of it. Thanks for untangling it for me, it seems, I did get tricked for my own viewing pleasure. Editor: Precisely, its all smoke and mirrors with a goal! We walk away, maybe a little dizzy, questioning the nature of reality. And maybe that is precisely where art should lead us.