VP-UFFO 1970 - 1974

This must be one of those illusionistic paintings by Victor Vasarely. He was born in Hungary in 1908, and this, like much of his work, is all about how the eye understands shape, depth, and colour. Vasarely was really interested in how we see, and his art is a kind of experiment with perception. The colours here are quite simple – a purple and a kind of ochre brown, but the way the shapes are organised gives you a very different sense of them. Look at the way the circles change size and spacing – it's like the painting is bulging out at you, or maybe even sucking you in. There is something very cool about the hard-edged geometry combined with the soft feel of the colours that reminds me of Bridget Riley, but also Sol LeWitt and his explorations of seriality and modular forms. But for me, the real magic is in how Vasarely turns a flat surface into something that feels alive and moving. It reminds us that art isn't just about what we see, but how we see it.