Curtain

Curtain plays with an old visual trick, making a flat surface appear to do something it cannot. It takes me back to the Op Art experiments of the last century. Simple geometry could persuade the eye to see movement, depth and volume where none existed.

Here, though, the reference is much more familiar. Curtain borrows from fabric hanging in regular folds. Those repeated pleats have their own gentle rhythm, created simply by cloth falling under its own weight.

Flatten that idea and something curious happens. The folds remain, although the fabric has disappeared. What should project and recede now exists on exactly the same plane.

I like that small deception. The eye understands the surface is flat, yet it continues to read those waves as volume. It becomes difficult not to imagine them rippling slightly.

There is a connection with Op Art in that uncertainty, although Curtain feels softer and less insistent. Its illusion comes from something ordinary rather than pure abstraction. A curtain hangs, folds and moves. This one does none of those things, yet somehow retains the memory of all three.