"My art is a visual laboratory where each line, circle, and square becomes a distinct experiment."
Youri Messen-Jaschin (b. 1941, Arosa, Switzerland) is a Swiss artist of Latvian origin internationally recognized for his pioneering contributions to Op Art, perceptual abstraction, and the study of visual movement. For more than sixty years, he has explored the boundaries between geometry, color, optical illusion, and human perception, developing a practice that bridges artistic experimentation and scientific inquiry.
Raised in a multilingual and culturally rich environment, Messen-Jaschin developed an early fascination with drawing, visual perception, and the relationship between form and imagination. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and later continued his education in Lausanne, Geneva, and Gothenburg, where he specialized in textile design. Throughout these formative years, he cultivated a rigorous understanding of line, structure, and composition that would become central to his artistic language.
A decisive turning point occurred during his studies in Sweden when he encountered the work of Jesús Rafael Soto, Carlos Cruz-Diez, and Julio Le Parc. Their investigations into movement, perception, and visual instability profoundly influenced his direction and confirmed his commitment to exploring the possibilities of Op Art. From that moment onward, Messen-Jaschin dedicated himself to creating works capable of generating movement through perception alone.
Throughout his career, he has worked across a remarkable range of media including painting, sculpture, screenprinting, textiles, neon installations, performance, and large-scale public interventions. Whether using thread, plexiglass, steel, aluminum, light, or printmaking techniques, his objective remains consistent: to create visual situations in which static forms appear to vibrate, shift, and move within the viewer's field of perception.
Unlike kinetic art, which relies on mechanical movement, Messen-Jaschin's work activates movement within the observer. His compositions engage physiological and cognitive processes, prompting the brain to generate sensations of vibration, depth, color transformation, and motion. This longstanding interest eventually led him to collaborate with neuroscientists and researchers, culminating in the publication of Op Art Meets Neuroscience in 2021, which explores the relationship between visual art and the functioning of the human brain.
For Messen-Jaschin, art is fundamentally a form of research. Every work begins as an experiment, carefully constructed through drawing, calculation, testing, and observation. His practice operates as a visual laboratory where perception itself becomes the medium. Through this ongoing investigation, he seeks not to deliver fixed messages, but to create experiences that emerge within the gaze, the mind, and the imagination of the viewer.
Today, Messen-Jaschin continues to live and work in Lausanne. His works are held in major public and private collections, including the Kunsthaus Zürich, the Cabinet des estampes of the Musée d'art et d'histoire de Genève, the Orensanz Foundation in New York, and the Sakima Art Museum in Japan. Through his lifelong exploration of movement, illusion, and perception, he remains one of the most significant contemporary voices in the field of Op Art.