Lucio de Heusch
L’île aux Corneilles

2001

A sense of play with depth and perception unsettles the viewer of L’île aux Corneilles, a work that conveys an interest in spatial and pictorial multiplicity as determined by various levels of perception. For “distance,” the artist posits an oblong black shape at the base of the work, which turns out to be the silhouette of an island. A sense of the viewer’s proxemics (i.e. the bodily space beyond the body) is confronted by the illusionistically painted stick that leans out at us from the wall, and casts a shadow toward the canvas to its left. Here, we see the perceptual tension evident in de Heusch’s recent work, in which he combines the use of physical depth with flat surfaces and the reproduction of objects alongside painted ones.