WYSI*not*WYG project

Our perception of reality is not objective. It is shaped by learning, experience, and visual automatisms that, over time, distance us from attentive observation of the world around us. We recognize forms, spaces, and objects without truly looking at them.

My artistic practice explores these perceptual mechanisms. It examines how visual information is transmitted, interpreted, and reconstructed by the observer, as well as the fragility of the spatial and temporal reference points upon which our understanding of reality is built.

From an early age, I developed a strong interest in perception. As a child, I experimented with different ways of observing the world: movement could appear either frozen or continuous, depending on the chosen point of observation. These early experiences, later reinforced through exercises related to vision and three-dimensional construction, profoundly shaped my relationship to reality. My artistic education led me to consider objects not as contents, but as structures, and to maintain a critical and attentive gaze toward the spaces that surround us.

My initial artistic research was based on photography and video, using images drawn from reality that I altered in order to disrupt perception. This approach, primarily formal, proved insufficient, as it tended to produce works that were more decorative than experiential. This stage, however, was essential in allowing me to rethink my visual language more radically.

I then oriented my practice toward a reflection on information and perception. I conceive reality — time, space, and matter — as constructions based on immaterial flows of information. To offer the viewer an alternative perspective on the real, I intervene directly in this information, creating disruptions in its transmission. The image becomes an altered fragment whose meaning cannot be fully decoded, leaving the viewer the possibility of mentally reconstructing it through personal experience.

This approach led to a central principle in my work: the deconstruction of spatio-temporal reference points. Through the fragmentation and recomposition of urban landscapes, without chromatic alteration, I seek to preserve a direct connection to the original environment while disturbing its conventional references. Rather than representing the world differently, my work questions the value and reliability of the information conveyed by what we perceive.

To seem rather than to be.

To suggest rather than to show.

The works I develop do not offer definitive answers, but open pathways for reflection, inviting viewers to experience the urban landscape through their own sensibility. My objective is not to reproduce reality as it is, but to propose a new angle of observation and inquiry.

Initiated in 2005, this research has taken shape through various forms and media, notably within the series Anarchitectures, Subspace Ana, Space Ana, and Huang Shan.

Portfolio: Anarchitecture in Shanghai | Anarchitecture in Evry | Anarchitecture in Seoul | Anarchitecture in Tokyo | Anarchitecture in Grand Paris | Subspace Ana |

The project Anarchitecture breaks down and offers a new version of reality for our day-to-day urban environment. Using fragmented images and contrasting parts, Olivier Ratsi remakes our urban landscape through digitally-processed photos.

This project considers objective reality, space and material as intangible concepts of information.  With the help of photographic decomposition, Ratsi has created a split in this objective reality (that of large urban settings), thereby altering our perception of what is real. 

These architectures of daily life seem both strange and familiar, near and yet far away.

By forcing people to question their ability to piece together what the artist has split apart, Olivier Ratsi provokes interactivity between the work of art and spectators, based on a mental exercise in visual reconstruction.

Portfolio: Anarchitecture in Shanghai | Anarchitecture in Evry | Anarchitecture in Seoul | Anarchitecture in Tokyo | Anarchitecture in Grand Paris | Subspace Ana |

Portfolio: Space Ana 

Space  Ana  is  an  ongoing  project  of  audiovisual  performances  drawn  from Anarchitecture project. Projected  and  staged  in  situ  on  buildings  on  a  macroscopic  scale,  Space  Ana  performances  suggest another  way  to  look  at  architecture  through  a  set  of  synchronized  visual  alterations.  The  idea  is  to  provide the  audience  with  a  new  field  of  experience,  a  different  way  of  considering  time  and  space. 

Portfolio: Space Ana 

Portfolio: Huang Shan part. 1 | Huang Shan part. 2 |

Portfolio: Huang Shan part. 1 | Huang Shan part. 2 |