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.
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.
A quick study of impossible interlocking cubes, taking the same paradoxical geometry from line drawing to watercolor and high-contrast digital collage.
The drawings use isometric projection to represent a three-dimensional cubic structure. The geometry appears consistent at first, but the planes intersect in ways that cannot exist in physical space. What functions as a back face seamlessly projects forward to become a front face, creating a continuous spatial contradiction.
“When I finish a work, it is just starting.” — Yaacov Agam
One of my favorite Op Art artists and a true visionary, Yaacov Agam (Hebrew: יעקב אגם) was a pioneer of kinetic and Op Art. His work explored movement, color, time, and perception, making the viewer an active part of the artwork rather than a passive observer.
Born in Rishon LeZion in 1928, Agam studied at the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem and later with Johannes Itten in Zurich. He moved to Paris in 1951, where he became one of the leading figures of the European avant-garde. His first solo exhibition was held there in 1953.
Agam died in June 2026, at 98, after receiving the Israel Prize for Visual Arts. His work is represented in major museums around the world.
Among his most remarkable achievements is the Salon Agam, commissioned by President Georges Pompidou for the private apartments of the Élysée Palace and created between 1972 and 1974. Now in the collection of the Centre Pompidou, it is essentially a kinetic environment: walls, doors, ceiling, carpet, color and geometric forms change as the viewer moves through the space.
Agam understood something fundamental about visual art: the work is not always what you see. It is also what happens when you move, look again, and see something different.
One of my earliest color illusions, created back in the 1990s, when I was immersed in exploring the physiology of color perception.
Do the pleated sections of the fan really have two different shades of brown?
They don’t. Every pleated “accordion” section is exactly the same brown. Only the thin light and dark bands bordering each fold differ. Those subtle edge contrasts trick your visual system into seeing alternating tones where none exist.
The color is perfectly uniform, but your brain interprets it differently depending on the surrounding contrast—a classic example of simultaneous brightness contrast.
I like building iconic portraits from the smallest possible palette—here, just five colors of Tic Tac mints plus white. A stripped-down system that still manages to flirt with something Mondrian-like, and, almost against its will, echoes a Renaissance portrait.
Color is energy—an electromagnetic phenomenon shaped by how light is reflected from objects. What we call vision is not innate. It is largely learned, built through a slow and demanding process. We tend to take it for granted, yet someone born blind who later gains sight must spend years learning how to organize and interpret what now enters the eyes.
Seeing is neither simple nor passive. When we look at a landscape, color information reaches the visual cortex in roughly 30 milliseconds (in the occipital lobe, V1). Only a fraction later—around 70 milliseconds—shape, depth, and motion begin to emerge. In these brief intervals, the brain filters, compares, and reconstructs fragments of data, assembling them into a coherent image. What we perceive is not a direct recording of reality but a refined interpretation—an internal best guess shaped for meaning and action.
I’ve long been intrigued by the way people with partial or total visual loss engage with the world. Any serious reflection on perception or optical illusion eventually meets its counterpoint. Understanding how they “see” without sight reveals the real weight of vision itself—and how inseparably it works with the other senses, each one calibrating the rest.
When we see, move, speak, and feel at once, what actually binds sight to touch or hearing? The truth is, we notice far less than we assume. We attend only to what matters in the moment. Without the constant support of the other senses, perception would collapse into confusion, because they operate quietly in the background, guiding everyday behavior.
A striking example comes from research on inattentional blindness. In a well-known 1999 experiment by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris, participants watched a video and counted basketball passes between two teams. Nearly 40 percent failed to notice a person in a gorilla suit walking through the scene, pausing, even dancing, before exiting. The demonstration is disarming in its simplicity: we do not see what we do not attend to—even when it stands directly in front of us.
Impossible or undecidable figures have long fascinated artists, mathematicians, and viewers alike. Their appeal lies in a delicate tension: the structure appears perfectly logical at first glance, yet closer inspection reveals spatial contradictions that cannot exist in the physical world. My latest work revisits an idea I first explored in the 1990s—an impossible Rubik’s-style cube—now developed into a new series built across several stages, from hand-drawn construction to digital refinement and photographic interpretation.
The project began with a simple geometric framework—interlocking beams arranged to suggest a stable cubic volume. The challenge was to reinterpret an apparently ordinary three-dimensional cube into an ambiguous form that still appears structurally plausible. Through careful adjustments of line weight, contrast, and directional and formal cues, the cube gradually shifts from perceived solidity to spatial uncertainty, so that as the eye moves across the image, the object quietly reorganizes itself, producing a surreal perception in place of a coherent physical structure.
Here is the original version of the project, refined from my initial hand-drawn construction and carefully reconstructed using FreeHand MX
Two of the final images belong to the Op Art tradition, where sharp black-and-white geometry emphasizes visual tension and rhythmic structure. These compositions highlight the cube’s architectural clarity while allowing the paradox to emerge naturally from the viewer’s perceptual processing. The remaining two images take a different path: they present the object in a photographic setting, rendered with realistic lighting and textures.
Together, the four images form a small visual narrative—construction, transformation, and illusion—showing how a purely conceptual structure can evolve into multiple aesthetic forms. The Op Art versions focus on perceptual mechanics, while the photographic interpretations suggest how an impossible form might inhabit the physical world, even if only in appearance.
Fine art prints and canvas editions from this series are available through my official gallery shop, where each piece is produced using archival materials designed for long-term display.
Collectors and galleries interested in larger formats or special editions may also contact me directly for availability and production details. This series continues my exploration of perceptual geometry, where simple shapes become instruments for questioning how we construct space, depth, and visual certainty.
I’ve always wondered about the limits of shape and color needed for us to represent or recognize an object. Take a stemmed glass, for example. To depict it, you might need just two circles and a straight line—and perhaps a red disc to suggest the wine inside.
But we can go further: by turning it from a flat image into a 3D form with a simple rotational movement, like in Duchamp’s rotoreliefs, the object suddenly comes alive in space.
All these graphic shortcuts rely on memory. Our brains interpret what we see based on past experience, filling in missing information and reconstructing the object from just a few essential cues. This process aligns with the principles of visual perception: the Gestalt laws of closure and continuity explain why we perceive a complete glass even when much of it is absent. Minimalist perception highlights how human cognition distills visual information, showing that a few simple shapes and colors are enough to evoke a rich, instantly recognizable image.
A simple study in visual perception—an exploration of how a plain hexagon can evolve into the illusion of a cube. Through precise geometry and controlled form blending, static lines awaken into rhythm and volume, giving rise to a subtle sense of depth and movement.
Constructing the Illusion
Fig. A — The Base Shape Start with a regular hexagon. Divide it into three equal diamond shapes (rhombuses)—these represent the three visible faces of the cube. Each diamond has four equal sides: two acute angles (60°) and two obtuse angles (120°). Together, they form the geometric foundation of the cube.
Fig. B — Building Volume with Shape Blends In Illustrator, or any other vector software, use the Blend Tool to create a shape blend inside each diamond. Start with a small central circle and blend it toward the outer edge of the diamond. Adjust the number of blend steps to control how smooth or tight the transition appears. This process builds the cube’s apparent volume and visual tension. You’ll notice that the distance from corner to corner in the nested, diamond-like shapes is slightly greater than from side to side, creating subtle gaps that lead the eye to perceive an X across the surface.
Fig. C — Perspective and Transformation Distort slightly the hexagon to set the three diamonds in perspective. This step transforms the flat figure into a die-like cube, giving it spatial depth and presence.
Enhancing the Optical Effect Next, add horizontal background lines and some color, as shown in the two examples in the image. You can also adjust the illusion by making the visible faces of the die appear slightly concave, as in the figure on the right. This effect is created by shifting the concentric, nested diamond shapes slightly off-center—the position of the central ellipse determines whether the die appears concave or convex.
Below is the finished stage of the work. Curiously, the cube appears to hover, slide, and even emit a faint blue glow—though it remains entirely black and motionless. Ananke’s Die is a study I began in 2010, a continuing exploration of how repetitive lines and geometric precision can trick the mind into sensing motion and color where none exist.
You can get Ananke’s Die as a fine art print or canvas, available in different sizes and finishes. 👉 Buy it here
Why Ananke’s Die
I titled this work Ananke’s Die after Ananke, the Greek goddess of necessity and fate. The cube, a symbol of structure, represents order and control. Yet the three visible faces that seem to define its volume are an illusion—shifting and unstable. Under the viewer’s gaze, the shape changes, its meaning shifts, yet the form remains. This illusory die shows the balance between order, perception, and destiny, reminding us that what we think we control often exists within the unpredictable interplay of vision and inevitability.
This image also triggers multiple associations in a loop: hexagon, cube, die, chance, illusion, order, fate, contradiction. These connections show how perception mixes stability and randomness, revealing that what we see is shaped as much by the mind as by reality.
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