“C+C" Media Art Residency

Weiyi Li is an artist (weiyi.li),

designer (weiyiandfriends.com) ,

curator (bigbadgallery.com),

publisher (re-publication.com),

retailor (currently-available.com)

Who lives and works between these five URLs.

She graduated from Tongji University in 2009 with a bachelor's degree in art design, and in 2012 from Yale School of Art with a master's degree in graphic design. In the same year, he won the Rebecca Tylor Porter Award. In 2018, she was shortlisted for the Huayu Youth Award and is currently studying for a PhD in Design Engineering at the Royal College of Art in London.

李维伊2009年毕业于同济大学，获得艺术设计学士学位，2012年毕业于耶鲁大学艺术学院，获得平面设计硕士学位。同年获得Rebecca Tylor Porter 奖，2018年入围华宇青年奖，现于伦敦皇家艺术学院就读设计工程博士。

Reverse Perspective Study ｜逆向透视练习
Painting: Plywood, Carpenter Pencils, Natural Wood Dyes, Hardwax Oil

Reverse perspective painting appeared prolifically in Byzantine artworks and early Renaissance works. If point-projection perspective painting is a technique for creating optical illusions, then reverse perspective is its opposite: a technique that does not pride itself on creating three-dimensional visual effects on a two-dimensional plane that can be observed by human eyes. Under the manipulation of this technique, objects that are far away on the picture are larger and objects in the near distance are smaller. However, there is no definitive evidence to state that artists of the time were consciously using this technique with regard to space. A great deal of early reverse perspective painting is more a product of the fact that the knowledge of perspective had not yet thoroughly spread and ruled the western world, a technical failure due to a limited view of the world, or a pursuit of composition and religious meaning.

Today, reverse perspective is a correction technique for excessive illusionary effects, and it is widely used to adjust image distortion caused by camera lenses. Because camera lenses and human eyes are built differently, after the camera has created an overly distorted image, one can find this function in many photo editing software (such as Photoshop) to reduce the distortion of the image to something that more closely matches what is seen by naked eyes. We might say that before the Renaissance, reverse perspective was a technical deficiency, yet now it can just be used to rectify the excesses caused by technology. (Consider what the excesses of today's illusion-making technology are actually doing. I have never seen the world with my naked eyes in the same way that wide-angle lenses have, and I have never seen a picture as sharp as the ones in the HD screen in real life.)

I was therefore intrigued by this technique of total rejection of illusion and thus created a series of chairs that were painted strictly in reverse perspective. I used plywood, carpenter pencils, natural wood dyes and hardwax oil, all of which are the materials that will be used to make a real chair today. Each of the plywood with chairs painted on is exactly the size of the original chair back (24 x 645 x 1200mm). Starting from this backboard, the chairs in the picture gradually shrink towards the front of the picture. This artwork can be seen as a structural sketch done with a very stringent error, or a sketch of a chair that is not intended to be the final product at all.

逆向透视画法(reverse perspective)大量出现在拜占庭艺术品和早期文艺复兴作品中。如果说正向的透视画法是制造幻觉的技术，那么逆向透视就是它的相反：这种技术并不以在二维的平面上制造人类肉眼能观察到的三维视觉效果为傲。在这种技术的操控下，画面上远处的物体更大，近处的物体更小。但是，并没有确切的证据说明当时的艺术家们是有意识地使用这种关于空间的技法。大量早期逆向透视画更像是透视的知识还未彻底传播和统治西方世界的产物，一种由于对世界的局部观察而导致的技术失误，或者是一种对宗教意义和构图的追求。

而在今天，逆向透视是一种针对过度制幻效果的矫正术，被广泛应用于调整相机镜头导致的图像变形上。因为相机镜头和人眼球的构造不同，在相机制造出过度畸变的图像以后，人们可以在许多图像软件(比如Photoshop)里找到这一功能，将图像的变形缩小到更近似肉眼所见的效果。我们或许可以这样说，在文艺复兴以前，逆向透视是一种技术上的不足；今日，这种不足刚好可以用来对技术造成的过度进行修正。(想想今日过度的制幻技术到底在做什么？我从未用肉眼看到过一个广角镜头下的世界，也从来没在现实生活中看到过HD视屏里那样锐利的画面。)

我因此很感兴趣这种全然拒绝幻觉的技术，从而制造了一系列严格以逆向透视画法绘制而成的椅子。我使用了合成木板、木工铅笔、天然木染料和木蜡油，这些都是在今天会用来制造一把真实椅子的材料。每一张绘制着椅子的木板都刚好是原本椅子背板的尺寸（24Å~645Å~1200mm）。画面上的椅子从这一张背板开始，向画面的前方逐渐缩小。这件作品可被看作是用一种极其严谨的错误手段完成的结构素描，或是一个根本不想变成最终成品的椅子草图。