Sergei Cadenas – Two images in one!
Sergei Cadenas is a self- taught Spanish optical artist who creates two paintings in one – the portrait image changes as you move from one side of the painting to the other! One example of his large portraits shows a lady aging from a young girl to an older lady as you move from left to right! The image gradually morphs from one to the other…..
And one well known face transforms into another.....
Sergei was born at Girona, Spain, in 1972 into an artistic family who for many generations, have worked with crafted ironwork. Sergie also worked in the foundry, and so, didn’t start painting until he was age 30.
He was interested in the complex themes of the extremes of the human existence, such as youth and old age, the polarity of emotions, and racial differences. He was inspired by flip images he’d seen on cards as a child, and experimented with ways to visually represent these themes of duality. He eventually came up with the idea of using a cake decorating piping bag to pipe raised vertical ridges down a large canvas and then painting separate portraits on either side of those narrow ridges. The incredible meticulous detail of the process results in the effect one portrait appearing to transform into the other as the viewer moves slowly from one side to the other!
His artwork makes powerful statements about the human condition. He uses both friends and celebrities alike as inspiration for his work. His paintings can be found in the Porrentruy Optical Art Museum (POPA) in Switzerland and in private collections around the world, and have gone viral on social media!
If you watch the following short video, you will see a number of examples of Sergei’s unique optical portraits. I am sure you will be amazed!