Dezeen Magazine

Felice Varini paints perspective-dependant artwork across Belgian city

Swiss artist Felice Varini has painted curved strips onto buildings and streets in Hasselt that create a picture of overlapping rings when viewed from a single vantage point in the Belgian city.

Trois Ellipses Ouvertes en Desordre no3 by Felice Varini

Felice Varini's Trois Ellipses Ouvertes en Désordre artwork covers several urban blocks in Hasselt's historic city centre.

Sections of white paint are applied across rooftops, walls and road surfaces, appearing in a seemingly random pattern when seen from the street level.

Trois Ellipses Ouvertes en Desordre no3 by Felice Varini

The full effect only becomes clear when viewed from the rooftop lounge of the Radisson Blu Hotel, where the image of three ellipses is revealed.

"The painted form achieves its coherence when the viewer stands at the vantage point," said Varini. "When he moves out of it, the work meets with space generating infinite vantage points on the form."

Trois Ellipses Ouvertes en Desordre no3 by Felice Varini

"It is not therefore through this original vantage point that I see the work achieved; it takes place in the set of vantage points the viewer can have on it," added the artist.

The patterns fall across 99 buildings including the city's cathedral, as well as shops and houses lining the streets of Maastrichterstraat, Hemelrijk and Fruitmarkt.

Trois Ellipses Ouvertes en Desordre no3 by Felice Varini

To create the artwork, lights were shone from the hotel onto the city with the pattern overlaid, creating a series of shadows that plotted the layout of the lines.

Painters used cherry pickers to reach the roofs and high sections of wall, filling in outlines drawn in yellow with white paint over a 20-day period.

"My field of action is architectural space and everything that constitutes such space," said Varini. "These spaces are and remain the original media for my painting. I work "on site" each time in a different space and my work develops itself in relation to the spaces I encounter."

Varini has created similar installations in public spaces around the world, including the Granary Building at London arts institution Central Saint Martins and the ladies toilets at the city's V&A museum.

Video is by Audiovisuele Studio.