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Toowoomba-based conceptual artist, Yianni Maggacis creates a visual conflict between the familiar and the strange through his representation of the strangely familiar liminal space, ‘The Good Room’. Using mediums such as paint, photography, and film, Maggacis encourages the viewer to ‘look awry’ at something as familiar as a ‘good room’ and see it as strange.

Maggacis’ work masterfully engages the concept of Trompe l’oeil. French psychoanalyst, Jacques Lacan argued the art of Trompe l'oeil is to be a ‘triumph of the gaze over the eye’. Maggacis asks his audience to imagine the limitations of their vision. An artwork that allows you to perceive the limitation of your gaze, is a work of Trompe l’oeil. Lacan put it best when he said:
‘What is it that attracts and satisfies us in trompe-l’œil? What is it that captures our attention and delights us? At the moment when, by a mere shift of our gaze, we are able to realize that the representation does not move with the gaze and that it is merely a trompe-l’œil.’

Yianni Maggacis, The Good Room 2023 (oil on canvas)

Maggacis’ intent with this exhibition is to engage with the concept of Trompe l’oeil; seen through anamorphosis. Maggacis explains that ‘my practice attempts to achieve Trompe l’oeil through three levels of this concept of anamorphosis. I argue this process of vision creates a visual conflict between the familiar and the strange – that which we know and are comfortable with and that which is foreign and unfamiliar – allowing a reflexive engagement with the work of art... This conflict causes the work to take on new contours, allowing the viewer to actively participate in a construction of a new personalised meaning. Ultimately, a work can only be interpreted, never understood, allowing only for what one might consider a poetic grasp of a work rather than an analytical reading.’ 

When engaging with Maggacis’ work, ask yourself, where does analytical reasoning end, and a poetic grasp of the work begin? At what point do you have difficulty in providing a straightforward understanding of the artwork? It is at this point, that you may find this shift in the gaze, and discover for yourself a work of Trompe l’oeil.