Corrugato Paradoxa

Gianni Sarcone

A study of an impossible structure. A series of undulating, fluted columns forms a repeating pattern of convex and concave surfaces. Fine cross-hatching, warm sepia tones, and a soft blue background give the drawing a classic, timeless look.

Available as fine art and museum-quality archival prints in a range of sizes and formats. ☞ Explore the print options.

Look closely: convex surfaces turn into concave ones and back again, creating an apparent continuity that defies the logic of the structure. A geometric paradox that plays with our perception of form and space.

Available as fine art and museum-quality archival prints in a range of sizes and formats. ☞ Explore the print options.

There are many variations of this illusion in which the fluting of an architectural structure is manipulated to create optical effects. By playing with the rhythm, spacing, shading, and shape of the grooves, familiar architectural forms can be made to appear distorted or even geometrically impossible, as shown below.

amibiguous arch
impossible arch

A Lone Wolf’s Manifesto

Gianni Sarcone

No, I’ve never liked the masses. A die-hard lone wolf since birth, I consider two people a group and three a crowd. Four? A public gathering. Five? Time to leave.

My aversion to crowds could raise a philosophical dilemma as old as Eubulides of Miletus and his famous Sorites paradox: at what point does a group become a mass? But I have no intention of intellectualizing my dislike of the multitude.

Most of humanity’s genuine progress has come from individuals, not crowds. Copernicus didn’t need a popular vote to move the Earth away from the center of the universe. Galileo didn’t conduct an opinion poll to establish that it revolved around the Sun. Darwin didn’t ask the public to approve evolution. Newton didn’t need a committee to formulate gravity. Einstein didn’t take a poll before challenging Newtonian physics. Semmelweis didn’t wait for a majority vote to insist that doctors wash their hands. And Rosa Parks certainly didn’t ask permission from the crowd before refusing to give up her seat.

History tends to be made by those who dare to think differently, not by those who simply think alike.

The masses, on the other hand, are remarkably easy to manipulate. Give them a slogan, a common enemy and someone to cheer for, and they’ll happily march wherever they’re pointed. Politicians know this perfectly well. They flatter the crowd, exploit its fears, sell it dreams and call it democracy. Their ultimate ambition, however, is considerably less noble: keeping their asses comfortably planted in a warm parliamentary seat for as long as humanly possible.

Of course, individuals can be fools, too. But at least they can be fools independently.

Personally, I distrust anything that requires people to think in unison. Intelligence has never needed a uniform, a megaphone, or a collective choreography. And if I have to choose between the solitude of a free mind and the warmth of a crowd thinking as one, I’d rather catch a cold.

Edvard Munch — Evening on Karl Johan Street (1892)

The Point at the Center of Everything

Gianni Sarcone

“Every abstract idea has a concrete past.”

Have you ever wondered why we call the middle of something its center? The answer lies in a rather unexpected place: the sharp tip of a metal instrument.

The word center (or centre, in British English) traveled through several languages before acquiring the meaning we know today. It entered English through Middle French centre, which came from the Latin centrum. But the story goes back even further, to the Ancient Greek word κέντρον (kéntron), meaning a sharp point, a spike, a goad, or even the sting of an insect.

In other words, the original meaning of center had very little to do with being in the middle of something. It was about pointing, piercing, and marking a precise spot.

The connection becomes clearer when we consider an instrument that has been used for centuries by mathematicians, architects, and draftsmen: the compass. When drawing a circle, one leg of the compass holds a sharp metal point firmly in place, while the other swings around it, tracing the circumference. That tiny, stationary point is the centrum — the fixed pivot around which the circle takes shape.

Since the sharp point of the compass determines the exact middle of the circle, the word gradually shifted from describing the point itself to describing the position it occupied.

By the late 14th century, centrum had come to mean the middle point of a circle. Then, by the late 16th century, its meaning had expanded further, referring to the middle, heart, or core of virtually anything.

From the sting of an insect to the point of a compass, from the geometry of a circle to the center of our world, the word had traveled a long way.

Well, this is how language often works: it begins with something tangible, something we can touch, see, or experience, and gradually transforms it into an image, an idea, or an abstraction. Even the most familiar words can conceal the memory of a physical world we no longer see behind them.

center etymology

Are We All Just Shadows?

Gianni Sarcone

Visual symbols shaped human communication long before written language, conveying ideas, values, and aspirations. As communication evolved, images became a universal language, capable of expressing complex ideas and deep emotions beyond the reach of words. A picture is worth a thousand words—but some images reveal more about humanity than we care to admit. Iconic photographs bear witness to history, yet witnessing is not the same as learning from it. Generation after generation, we keep repeating what they warned us against.

Now look at this photograph. That shadow on the steps seems harmless enough, doesn’t it? But what does it really tell us?

Known as the Human Shadow of Hiroshima (人影の石), it was left on the steps of the Sumitomo Bank, about 250 meters from the hypocenter of the atomic bombing on August 6, 1945. The person sitting there acted as a shield, protecting the stone beneath their body from the intense heat and light that bleached the surrounding surface, leaving a permanent silhouette.

That shadow tells a story: the trace of a human life swallowed by history. According to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, where the stone is displayed, the person was reportedly identified as Mitsuno Ochi, born in 1903. Her descendants are still alive today.

A shadow is all that remains. History leaves its marks on stone; humanity writes its own story in sand. What, then, does it mean to leave a mark on the world when human life itself is so fragile?

Photograph by Yoshito Matsushige.

On Art Again, Despite Everything

Gianni Sarcone

The word art, in the sense we give it today, has no exact equivalent in ancient Greek. The Greeks used téchnē (τέχνη), a term far broader than our word technique. It referred to the knowledge and skill required to make something well, with a clear purpose and a command of the means to achieve it.

The value of a work was also measured by its aretḗ: its excellence in fulfilling its purpose. The Greek word agathós, meaning “good,” could describe something or someone performing their role well: a soldier who showed courage in battle, or a craftsperson who gave a material the form best suited to its purpose.

In this way of thinking, beauty and goodness were not entirely separate. Quality was not an ornament added to usefulness; it was the fullest expression of a thing’s purpose.

In ancient Rome, ars referred to skills acquired through study, practice, and experience, while ingenium described natural gifts and innate talent. Art, then, was not merely a matter of inspiration. It also required knowledge, discipline, and mastery of one’s craft.

Even today, the words master and maestro, both derived from the Latin magister, reflect this older ideal of artistic excellence. They describe someone who has developed exceptional skill through knowledge, practice, and experience.

In the past, we tended to admire what an artist could do: their skill, their command of their craft, their technical mastery—or, at its worst, technique for technique’s sake. Today, what seems to matter more is the ability to surprise us: the unprecedented, the unexpected, the breaking of conventions. The source of wonder has shifted from mastery to novelty, from what an artist can accomplish to what no one has seen before.

Personally, I have no problem with that shift. Technique matters, but when it becomes an end in itself, it can get in the way of the very thing it should serve: the pleasure of experiencing a work of art on our own terms, without being told what to see or how to feel. After all, true mastery does not always mean showing off what you can do. Sometimes, it means knowing when to stop proving it.

And as a final thought, let’s be honest: these days, what often matters most is not what the artist can do, but whose name appears on the work. Believe me, an authenticated signature can carry more weight than the art itself. There’s even a Greek-derived word for it: autograph. Just my two cents.

Komorebi: The Beauty of Passing Moments

Gianni Sarcone

With age, I have developed a quiet awareness—a deliberate minimalism that allows me to step back from the current of life, much as an artist steps back from a canvas to see it whole. I am a solitary person by nature. I have little appetite for the frenzy of our times: the endless accumulation of possessions, the demands of social obligations, or the constant stream of noise competing for our attention. I prefer distance, silence, and the freedom to observe without being swept along.

There is a Japanese word that captures something of what I feel: komorebi (木漏れ日).

It describes sunlight filtering through the leaves of trees, scattering shifting patterns of light and shadow across the ground. Yet it also speaks to me of the fleeting beauty of things that cannot be held still. It stirs a quiet blend of serenity and melancholy, a feeling that passes through my senses and reaches the deepest part of my being, where I feel closest to my true self.

Komorebi brings to mind Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Both touch on light, shadow, and the limits of human perception. Yet while Plato urges us to look beyond appearances, I find myself lingering over them.

A breeze moves the branches, the light shifts, and the pattern changes. What appears in one moment will never be exactly the same again. Nothing needs to be captured, explained, or possessed. I only need to be there to witness it.

Beauty has less to do with permanence than with attention. A moment does not lose its value because it passes; its transience is part of what makes it matter.

We spend so much of our lives trying to hold on to people, places, feelings, and even former versions of ourselves that no longer exist. Yet life, like sunlight through the leaves, is always moving. What slips away may never return, but we have known it, if only for a moment.

To notice komorebi is to pause and recognize that impermanence is not the enemy of beauty. It is inseparable from it.

The light filters through. The leaves move. For a fleeting moment, the world is simply as it is.

That is enough.

Ceci n’est pas une perspective

Gianni Sarcone

An impossible orange structure embedded in a surreal, Magritte-like painting.

This image is part of a book project exploring visual illusions through paintings inspired by the styles of well-known artists. The idea is to revisit familiar artistic languages—Magritte, Picasso, and others—through invented works that play with visual illusions, perspective, and perceptual paradoxes.

I’m developing this as a richly illustrated book for a broad audience interested in art, perception, and visual thinking.

I’d be interested in hearing from publishers or art-book editors who might like to explore the project.

Interference Photography: When Color Is No Longer a Dye, but a Structure

Gianni Sarcone

In 1891, French physicist Gabriel Lippmann invented interference photography, a process that could capture color without using dyes or pigments. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1908 for this work.

The principle is simple but remarkable. Light passes through an extremely fine-grained photosensitive emulsion and is reflected by a layer of mercury behind it. The incoming and reflected waves interfere, producing standing waves whose structure varies with the wavelengths of light. This microscopic interference pattern is recorded in the emulsion.

An interference photograph of a bouquet of flowers from the Lippmann Collection, preserved at Sorbonne University.

When the plate is later illuminated, its microscopic structure diffracts and reflects selected wavelengths, reproducing the colors of the original scene. Unlike conventional three-color photography, which reconstructs color from three components, Lippmann’s process stores the color information as a physical structure of interference.

The process, however, was technically demanding and never became practical for widespread photography. In 1907, the Lumière brothers introduced the Autochrome, which became the first widely successful commercial color photography process based on three-color principles.

Lippmann photography had one important advantage, though: because it used no dyes, its colors were not subject to fading caused by the deterioration of colorants over time.

And the old idea has found a new life. Researchers have adapted the principle of Lippmann’s standing waves for long-term archival data storage. In 2019, experimental storage plates were exposed to cosmic radiation aboard the International Space Station for nine months, with no detectable degradation of the stored data.

From recording color to preserving information in space, the same principle still has something to say: sometimes the most durable way to store information is to make it part of the structure itself.

☞ Further reading.

Sarcone: The Willow

Gianni Sarcone

My surname Sarcone, attested as early as circa 1150, may reflect a phytotoponym derived from the Latin salix, salĭcis, “willow,” with the collective or augmentative suffix -ōne. A possible evolution is salicōne → salicone → sar(i)cone, through the phonetic changes that shaped the name over time.

I like to think that my name is connected to nature, and especially to this magnificent tree: the willow. The willow has always fascinated me for its resilience, flexibility, and capacity for renewal. It bends without breaking, withstands the wind, and grows back vigorously after being cut. Its strength comes from its flexibility.

That symbolism speaks to me. Life constantly changes, and resisting every change is not necessarily a sign of strength. Sometimes you have to bend, adapt, and keep going without losing your roots.

The willow is also traditionally associated with the cycles of the Moon, imagination, dreams, intuition, and flexibility of mind. I find these associations particularly fitting, since much of my work concerns perception, imagination, and the strange ways in which the mind constructs what we call reality.

My name also has an ancient Indo-European root. Salix is related to the Indo-European root *səlik, with cognates such as Greek helíkē and related forms in Celtic and Germanic languages.

I like the idea that a surname can carry such a long memory. A few letters inherited from the past can still evoke a tree, its roots, its branches, its movement in the wind—and, in some small way, the person who carries its name.

Sarcone: the willow. Rooted, flexible, resilient, and always capable of growing again.