Serge Clément’s and Marina Kamena’s overarching tropes are illusion and perspective: “Illusion is a means of testifying to life, of restoring what the artists have seen, and finally of making something more real, more intense than reality.” Kamena contrasts this to the goal of trompe l’oeil, which is “not to illuminate but rather to fascinate the beholder. It imitates reality. It never goes beyond.” The illusion in their work emphasizes the timelessness of everyday reality, and distortions help create that reality. For example, what the viewer sees may seem to be flowers in a field but are in fact screw heads on an inclined plate.

Serge Clément and Marina Kamena began making collaborative art in 1996. Their work reflects decades of studying Western European art from the Renaissance onward, and their style of collaboration is modeled on the ateliers of the Renaissance. The results are offbeat, clever works of enormous craftsmanship that outguess the viewer.