sea of clouds Laurent Rosset

Have you ever been on a plane, looking out through the window in a broad daylight, and seeing the white fluffy clouds right below you? If you have, well, so has Laurent Rosset, an Italian-born and Danish-based architect and digital illusionist.

He was so inspired by his plane travel and seeing everyday elements from a different angle, that he decided to challenge reality. By using his imagination and Photoshop, Laurent Rosset blends the details of natural beauty together and drowns clouds in the sea.

Browse some of my favorite images from Rosset’s collection and check out my full interview with the artist below.

Tell me a little bit about yourself, where did you grow up, your education?

I’m an architect and digital illusionist (I know that the common word would be a digital artist, but I like to give a better definition to what I do by calling them digital illusions) based in Denmark. I was born in Italy, where I grew up in a small town surrounded by mountains called Aosta. My name is French because actually my hometown is really close to France and Switzerland, so it is really common to have a French name when living in that area. I started my education as an architect in Torino, Italy where I completed my bachelor. After that, I moved to the Netherlands. I got my Master in Architecture at TU Delft, a really amazing and inspiring university. Afterward, I moved to Denmark as I got a job here as an architect in a firm called CEBRA.

As I wrote initially, next to being an architect I am also a digital illusionist. My passion for photography began when I was very young. I followed some basic photography courses but while growing up I discovered more and more my strong interest in surrealism and photo manipulation. I started to practice that more and more in my free time, mainly publishing my iPhone-made edits on Instagram.

The software and skills used in architecture have been essential to this passion to evolve. Everything related to beauty and composition is definitely a link between architecture and photography. So while acknowledging and applying all principles to my architecture education, I also found an extension for all that in my fascination with photo editing. In a way while learning how to follow the rules in architecture, I started breaking them through photography.

This definitely signed also my way to express architecture, bringing the dreamy and magical aspect from photos to buildings. It is now about four years that I can call this hobby also a job, as I started to work with clients, selling pictures and being exhibited in a gallery.

What does your work aim to say (digital illusions projects)?

My work aims to make people dream and smile. I actually really like to imagine that my pictures can transmit a story to the people that look at them. The interpretation wants to be open to who is watching, but I always try to give a strong dreamy vibe to what I do. Most of my pictures are actually challenging reality with some dreamy aspects. I do this not to show that reality is not nice, the opposite, to enhance the fact that reality is so nice that we can dream of it and sometimes make our dreams come true. Most of the time I like to play with gravity, scale, and perspective. Sometimes I start questioning myself what if…? So I merge different pictures in order to create results that can trigger people to dream.

Your architecture projects are unique and creative. Tell me a little bit about them? Are they going to be developed?

I really appreciate you like my architecture projects too. As I wrote I think that my photography and my architecture are really connected to each other. The aim is to create spaces where people can not only feel comfortable but also smile and dream, shaping the future in which we want to live. Currently, I’m working in an architecture office called CEBRA. Their ideas are really in line with mine so I like to see how some projects can become reality. The projects you saw on my website were purely my projects developed during my education period. Will they be built? Well, why not, they just need a place and a developer, but seriously maybe one day soon those ideas will be shaping the world.

 

If you want to learn more about Laurent’s architecture projects see the link below  https://laurentrosset.com/architecture

 

Who are your biggest influencers?

I believe that inspiration is all around us. Social media, movies, blogs, books, dreams everything inspires creativity to express itself.

I am a huge fan of artists like Escher, Magritte, Dalì but I’m also constantly inspired by photos I see every day on Instagram. I think that ideas are one of the most powerful viruses for people. Sometimes the mind – like the body – can stave off infection. Of course, these are innocuous viruses, but by looking around us we can be infected by ideas and inspirations. It is not just looking at things similar to what we do ourselves, but also the most different form of art can make us develop new concepts. It is the way we look at things, not just about what we are looking at.

What keeps you going and why do you do what you do? What is your dream goal with your art?

I really like sharing my art and inspiring people around me. Of course, a goal is to sell my prints and being exhibited, but for me, it is really a lot about sharing and spreading my concepts. One of my projects some years ago has been to create Lorystripes, an iPhone app that people can use to edit their pictures by adding graphical stripes. I was extremely excited to work on something that for me was going beyond art: creating a tool that people could use to make art. I really like to work with clients too. I take their requests as a challenge and that motivates me to do my best to create something great. I also believe that we learn by doing so every time when working on something I can learn new things that will be ready for the next steps or next series.

What advice would you give to somebody who is an artist?

I think everyone is an artist in its own unique way, so my suggestion: find your own way and just express yourself.

Digital Art Illusion
Tanning in the Moonlight

Learn more about Laurent by visiting his pages below:

Website:
https://laurentrosset.com

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/l_o_r_y

Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/rosset.laurent

Shop:
https://laurentrosset.com/buy

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