Finissage (drinks reception with the artist): Saturday, January 10 2026, 6-8pm
Nguyen Wahed is pleased to present Iridescence, a solo exhibition by Nicolas Sassoon featuring three distinct bodies of work that investigate light, perception, and temporal suspension through digital media.
Central to the exhibition is DOORS, Sassoon's contribution to the [aside] protocol project developed with Distributed Gallery collective. This series employs blockchain technology as conceptual framework, where artworks become temporally locked, their transferability contingent upon temperature fluctuations in specific geographic locations. Through Chainlink's oracle technology, these digital works bind themselves to meteorological data, transforming climate conditions into gatekeepers of economic circulation. The work proposes a radical interdependence between digital assets and environmental phenomena, where rising or falling temperatures determine market accessibility.
WAVES, an earlier commission originally created for Vancouver's Yaletown-Roundhouse Station, demonstrates Sassoon's foundational investigations into Moiré patterns and optical interference. By layering symmetrical configurations of curved lines over pixelated backgrounds, the work generates phantom movements activated by viewer displacement. These accidental vibrations, emerging from the technological limitations of early computer graphics, become deliberate compositional strategies, transforming glitches into grammar.
The exhibition culminates with Prismatic Studies, Sassoon's most recent exploration of iridescence as both natural phenomenon and digital possibility. Drawing from biological and atmospheric sources, butterfly wings, oil spills, ice crystals, these works translate color-shifting properties into screen-based experiences. Each piece appears as a living surface, constantly transforming, impossible to pin down representationally. Prismatic Studies is informed by iridescence as an optical phenomenon, as well as biological and non-biological iridescent surfaces, textures, and materials. Iridescence is known for its unique color shifting properties. This idea of shifting is important in Prismatic Studies, since the identification of a specific motif or representation within the artworks is almost impossible. Each work appears as a living surface, breathing, pulsing, constantly shifting.
Iridescence is instinctively attractive to humans, as if it wants to be noticed, but in nature it is mostly used for opposite reasons. Humans use iridescence for decorative and aesthetic purposes (to be seen), while in nature it is mostly used for camouflage and confusion (not to be seen). It's an interesting paradox, since our attraction for iridescence appears to lie in our inability to fully grasp it.
We typically see light as a simple and consistent phenomenon, but iridescence reveals light's complexity and variability. Through refraction, iridescence makes visible the otherwise invisible spectrum. Prismatic studies explores this in relationship to our visual experiences on screens: iridescence is color through light and without pigment, comparable to how color appears on screens, through light rather than pigments.
As Sassoon notes: "My interest in moire patterns, retinal persistence, and iridescence lies in the fact that these optical phenomena make us aware of optical illusions. They also make us aware of the material complexity of the surfaces we’re looking at (in this case, screens). The beauty of optical and kinetic art forms lies in those moments, pointing to the perceptual limitations of our eyes and brains, as well as the devices used to deceive them."
Optical illusions and retinal persistence are important in Prismatic Studies, and it is central to how animation operates in general. Retinal persistence is a common optical illusion where the eye retains an image for a fraction of a second after the light source disappears. Screens operate following this principle (using refresh rate), meaning that screens are essentially elaborate optical illusion devices. The form and content of the artworks relate to one another: shifting forms based on shifting optical phenomena, on which the animations are based. The representation of iridescence on screens invites us to consider screens for their inner workings, as objects of light and optical illusions. The artworks also point out commonalities between technological objects and biological forms, and our experiences trying to grasp them.
Together, these works map Sassoon's sustained inquiry into how digital constraints generate new forms of beauty, where technological limitations become poetic possibilities, where screens reveal themselves as elaborate optical illusion devices, where the virtual achieves unexpected materiality through pure light.