Felice Varini is known for creating illusions of flat graphics superimposed on three dimensional spaces. These illusions, which he's been churning out since 1979, play with the rules of human perception and constructed perspective, with painted lines aligning in space to look like a flat graphic from a fixed viewpoint. For a taste of his past work, check out the painted rooms we blogged in 2006.

Now, in Cercle et suite d'éclats, Varini has taken on the challenge of working at the scale of the village, superimposing perfect circles on the town of Vercorin in the Swiss Alps. From inside the village, the graphic is fragmented and impossible to read, but from a nearby vantage point, the lines come together to form a series of rings.

So how did Varini make this? It's both simple and amazing—the graphic is projected directly onto the town from the selected viewpoint and then traced.

More shots after the jump.

via today and tomorrow