Magician · Close-up
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
Albert Einstein
“Magic consists in influencing the human mind by means of illusion. But true magic is the art of making people believe that the impossible is within reach.”Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin
Close-up
No stage, no distance, no mysterious apparatus.
Only objects you have always known: a deck of cards, a few coins, a banknote, a rubber band. And your hands, a few inches from mine.
It is right there, where there is nothing to hide, that the impossible becomes real.
The green baize
For centuries, at the gaming tables, a few have known how to make the cards obey. Patient hands, secret techniques, nerves of steel.
Umbosky has studied that world to bring it into the light. For once the cheat plays with his cards face up, and you may watch everything.
But you will see nothing.
The story
A physicist by training, with a thesis on the evolution of galaxies, Umbosky has spent his life chasing questions without answers.
Then he discovered that the closest mystery was lying on a table, hidden among fifty-two cards.
The evenings of the Circolo Amici della Magia at the Teatro Juvarra in Turin: few seats, no distractions, and the impossible inches from your eyes.
How to see me