James Flynn’s recent body of work emerges from a philosophical paradigm informed by Quantum Physics, which suggests that Consciousness—rather than Matter—constitutes the underlying fabric of Reality. His paintings engage in a widening dialogue across physics and philosophy, in which the Observer is understood not as a passive witness but as an active participant in shap-ing what becomes visible.
Flynn credits Pedro Friedeberg and Peter Lobello as his principal artistic influences, having studied closely with both. His visual language is structured by Friedeberg’s intricate pattern complexity and geometric illusionism, along with Lobello’s disciplined abstract minimalism. Evolving from this lineage, Flynn extends the perceptual innovations of the 1960s Op Art movement—particularly Vasarely, Yvaral, Soto, and Agam—while reframing their ideas through Quantum Theory and non-materialist models of Consciousness. Within this expanded framework, perception becomes an active medium in which awareness shapes the very image that appears.
In Thresholds of Perception, Flynn explores the shifting relationship between Observer and Observed, between perception and what we call “reality.” His paintings operate as observer-activated perceptual fields in which images continually reorganize as the viewer changes vantage point. Each shift in perspective reveals a new visual configuration unique to each encounter. Each painting remains fluid until the viewer’s engagement “collapses” it into a temporary state, echoing the way observation in Quantum Theory collapses a range of possibilities into a single state. Wave-like fields appear to condense into particle-like structures as patterns converge, shift, and dissolve. Colors coalesce into new chromatic effects, and two-dimensional shapes oscillate into three-dimensional illusions. The image remains purposely elusive, continually reconfiguring itself through the dynamic interplay between painting and viewer, revealing how perception itself gives rise to the world we see.
These perceptual effects arise from Flynn’s manipulation of ambiguous geometry, evanescent color harmonies, and the spatial dynamics of chromatic induction, further intensified by strategic use of iridescent, metallic, and ultraviolet-reactive pigments, collectively heightening the optical reactivity and instability of the surface. Flynn ultimately confronts the viewer’s perception of perception itself, a pivotal insight that leads directly to the quantum concepts that animate his work. His optokinetic experiments parallel key principles of Quantum Theory, including the Observer Effect, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, and the dynamics of Young’s Double-Slit Experiment. Flynn’s visual fields do not merely allude to these ideas—they enact them.