As a professor of psychology and neural science at NYU, Pelli has spent decades interrogating the way neurons analyze visual stimuli — that is, how our brains make sense of what our eyes see — to learn how we recognize shapes, read, and even experience beauty.
As a visual artist, he has applied his scientific understanding to create works that blur the lines between art and science. Pelli completed his undergraduate studies in applied math at Harvard and earned his Ph.D. in physiology at Cambridge University.
For his work in science, see his other web site: denispelli.com
Catalog
Lateral Sky View 2021
An imperfect parabolic cylindrical mirror (60”×50”×51”) installed in the basement floor of a clothing retailer offers an eye-level view through a sky light above the stair well.
The Flower Wall installation near Yale Art Gallery on September 22, 2019, showing Denis Pelli's architect brother Rafael. Photo by
Flower Wall 2019
For his father Cesar Pelli’s memorial at Yale University, Denis Pelli designed a Flower Wall consisting of hundreds of water-filled test tubes suspended on copper cables in a copper frame that accepted flowers, each hand carried from the chapel by attendees of the memorial.
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The Brodmann Areas Ballet 2012
A section of the ballet is designed to be viewed out of the corner of the viewer’s eye, Pelli used visual “crowding”— inability to individuate an object from others nearby — to hide or reveal a dancer in plain view. Pelli collaborated with choreographer Julia Gleich on this section of her ballet.
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Chuck Close shows that size affects shape 1999
In this article in Science, Pelli reported a simple rule that predicts the nearest distance at which one sees 3D depth in Chuck Close’s blocky portraits. Close encounters — An artist shows that size affects shape. Science, 285, 844-846. By Denis Pelli.
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Thresholds: Limits of Perception 1997
Day-long NYU symposium and two-week gallery show exhibited works by artists and scientists including Chuck Close, Bela Julesz, Ellsworth Kelly, Agnes Martin, Robert Shapley, and Herman Snellen (world’s first eye chart, 1862). The show included Pelli’s sculpture, “Something from Nothing”, in which the same large letter is painted on each of five scrims, but it’s too faint to see unless all the scrims are visually aligned. Curated by Denis Pelli and Ana Maria Torres.
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Pelli-Robson Contrast Sensitivity Chart 1988
A new eye chart, using gradually fading letters of a fixed large size to test the limits of viewer perception. In the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. Clinical Vision Sciences 2, 187-199. Invented by Denis Pelli and John Robson.
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