Anamorphosis as a Visual Metaphor: The Dynamics of a Necessary Interaction Between the Artwork and the Observer

The chapter deals with both psychological and visual aspects of an anamorphic installation in order to fully understand the great communicative potential of this kind of illusion. The distortion of a well-known image into a series of meaningless signs generates, in the observers, both physical and mental instability. They naturally move in search of the only point of view in which, what previously seemed unrecognisable ends up revealing itself. What happens can be compared to a subjective and private epiphany in the observer’s mind, capable of generating strong satisfaction. In the anamorphic installations, the perceived image and the recognised one are the extreme terms of a wide range of emotions, interpretations and sensations, within a problematic relationship among each other, solved only by the geometry, which assigns a privileged role to the privileged point of view, the centre of the entire projective system, whose value is directly proportional to the number of other discordant perceptions obtained by exploring anamorphic signs, and so, enjoying the artistic experience.