Featured Artist
Jean-Philippe Deugnier

Of Franco-German origin, inspired as much by the Bauhaus as by the Support-Surface the avant-garde French movement, Edward Hopper or Vilhelm HammershØi, I turned professionally to art, a field practised as an amateur for 25 years, after several years spent in the radio-pharmaceutical industry. I work on memory, resilience, cognition and emotions. I make protean, multi-discursive and evolving works, which swing between art and science. I am inspired by Optical Art, developed in the 1920s and the 1960s, particularly by Nicolas Schöffer and Josef Albers, especially the notion of residual images, but adapted to photography. I often include in my images, curves or mathematical formulas, speaking about the ambivalence between materialism and emotion. Vision is the perception of the outside world, a physiological mechanism linked to colours and visual sensations, but it is also to represent oneself in the mind, the act of imagining, extrapolating, and poeticizing.

Improved vision is a more dynamic, positive, coherent psychological model. Positive energy to develop in oneself. This is what the title represents. Through the presentation of multiple abstract images and specific work on colours, I want to instill retinal stimuli in the viewer in order to activate his imagination, to play with his mind. Enhanced Vision brings together notions related to “optics”, the use of the retina as a means of perception and analysis, and related to “narration”, by achievements that can be understood by all, and who participate in the creation of a narrative witness to a subjective reality. This sensitivity is based on four axes: psycho-scientific research based on theories of Optical Art, a figurative theme, an appropriation of new technologies, and participatory art, as well as on three fundamentals: vision, movement and emotion. These pivots are articulated according to the following rule: vision, induced by displacement, introduces the stimulus that generates introspection and emotion.

Vision: New technologies, such as digital photography and industrial printing media have brought a new vision and an increased mastery of speech. This figurative aspect of our creations goes beyond the physiological perimeter to reach more deeply the emotion. Movement: optical Art is a participatory art, in opposition to so-called contemplative art. Optical Art is retinal vibration, we have said, and if the eye is the motor of the work, then it is a kind of dynamo which transforms the driving energy of the viewer into luminous and vibrating energy, under the effect of walking, two-dimensional movement (right-left, front-back) but also the smallest nod of the head. In other words, the slightest motor expenditure is instantly rewarded with a maximum yield of visual sensation. By visually entering my works, the audience achieves, in a sense, a static performance or a dynamic observation of the work.

Emotion: Basically, Optical Art aims to educate the eye, “by revealing the still unexplored possibilities” as Nicolas Schöffer said and by induction, that is to say from the particular to the universal, to improve Man. From a physical, psychic and energetic point of view. I use my images to address resilience, positive dynamism of thought and self-knowledge Jean-Philippe Deugnier The art of Vision and experiment arts 2 For example, the project “Enhanced Vision” presents 8 pictures in large square formats of 120cmx120cm. The works, in color on a black background, are divided into two parts, the left side remaining static, while the right side varies chromatically. These are lenticular prints crossing 4 images working in chromatic contrasts. The play of colors varying from positive to negative vibrates the vision and makes it almost palpable. Those pieces of work have been presented at the MMOMA of Moscow for an international exhibition in October 2021, and have entered in the permanent collections of art of the “Kyiv Art Gallery” the national museum of Modern Art of Kiev, in Ukraine, in September 2021. I have extrapolated this work to glass. Working with Fusing and sandblasting glass with coloured and neutral glass. This kind of work is perfect to experiment with the different ways to see the game of light through a translucent matter apart smooth and apart diffract.

Image courtesy of Jean-Philippe Deugnier

Image courtesy of Jean-Philippe Deugnier

Image courtesy of Jean-Philippe Deugnier

“I work on memory, resilience, cognition and emotions. It is a question, by a specific work on the image, especially on the color and its interpretation, to send stimuli to the viewer, who takes the image for him, appropriates it and in a way, completes the image. story. I have three creative directions: optical art, in particular the notion of afterimages and chromatic game; the non-figurative, inspired by the grammar of lyrical abstraction and codes of simple shapes and symbolic colors; semiology, with work on the sign and writing. A work that once again combines color and its aesthetic resonance. I often include curves or mathematical formulas in my images, thus highlighting the ambivalence between materialism and emotion. Passionate about photography, I use all of its techniques, both post-production and print media. I like his simplicity and his direct speech. I use either my own shots or images on glass plates, copyright-free (portraits, family photos, handwritten letters) dating from the XIX-XXth century, which I scan and rework in chromatic contrast, allowing a game of optical and requiring increased observation of the image. So, I push the viewer to take an emotional and introspective journey.”

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