Yapoura 1954

Victor Vasarely created ‘Yapoura’ using hard edges and flat colour to make a world that pops right off the canvas. It’s a kind of process art, a system, and within that system, there’s room to play. The black and white give it graphic punch, but it's the subtle distortion that gets me, the way those geometric shapes bend and bulge like they’re pressing against glass. Look at how the shapes in the center seem to reach out, while those at the edges get squeezed, playing tricks on your eye. There’s an illusion of depth, but the paint stays flat, a little tension between what you see and what you know. You can see some similarities in Bridget Riley’s work. Both of them create these optical illusions, but where she goes for these wave patterns, Vasarely is all about shape and form. It’s this ongoing conversation, each artist pushing the limits of what paint can do, always inviting us to see things just a little bit differently.