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Posts Tagged ‘Illusions’

Invisible Skyway: Urban Optical Illusions Conceal & Distort

30 Oct

[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

illusion artist bridge

New Zealand artist, illusionist and urbanist Mark Hewson has a good many tricks up his sleeve involving spatial deception, convincing citizens there is less (or more) to their city than can ordinarily be seen.

illusion fake sky bridge

His first trick in this series: disguising an ordinary street-crossing skyway from a series of key vantage points. But even from alternate angles where the lines do not sync up, the effect is dizzying. Our pattern-seeking brains keep looking for transparency or reflection where there is just a solid painting.

optical urban illusion art

Other illusions in his repertoire involve mirroring or warping unseen elements behind solid surfaces or sheets of material. Again, this toying with voids and our structural expectations induces odd forms of visual vertigo.

optical trick magic photois

In previous projects, like the Lost Space Installation, he has worked with gaps and openings, filling them in with imaginary scenes that range from plausible to impossible. While these may be more obviously fake on the surface, they create a nonetheless potent sense of spatial distortion and disorientation.

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Unbelievable Illusions: Adding a 3rd Dimension to 2D Surface

12 Oct

[ By Delana in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

projection mapping performance piece

This mesmerizing performance piece from Bot & Dolly blends reality and a technological fantasy world. Using 3D projection mapping, two large white surfaces and two talented robots, the artistic duo created a kind of dance that incorporates high technology and a helping human hand.

The piece is called simply “Box,” and it shows how current technology can be used to manipulate our perceptions of space. The projections create mind-bending optical illusions that look so amazingly real it’s hard to believe there has been no digital trickery involved.

As the making-of video above shows, however, it wasn’t trickery. It was simply amazing technology applied to a graceful and artistic purpose.

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Shadow Sculptures: Illusions from Clumps of Junk

27 Mar

[ By Steph in Art & Sculpture & Craft. ]

Wiegman Shadow Sculptures 1

These chaotic and random collections of objects placed on pedestals don’t seem gallery-worthy on first glance, but shine a light upon them in just the right way, and something magical occurs. These bits of broken glass, disassembled furniture and household objects created by Diet Wiegman transform into Michelangelo’s David, the Venus de Milo, hovering chairs or Michael Jackson.

Wiegman Shadow Sculptures 2

Wiegman Shadow Sculptures 3

Wiegman Shadow Sculptures 4

While Wiegman is not the only artist producing light and shadow art of this kind, he seems to have been the first; most of these works were created in the 1980s. In addition to these light and shadow sculptures, Wiegman is known for ceramics that mimic broken and rusted junkyard finds, from crumpled tin cans to pieces of old gears.

Wiegman Shadow Sculptures 5

Wiegman Shadow Sculptures 6

Wiegman has a gift for seeing beauty in the most unexpected places, whether in these surprising sculptures or in his still-life photography of his own art juxtaposed with trash and a cast of a human head. See his entire portfolio at his Tumblr.

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Not Photoshopped: New Optical Illusions by Felice Varini

26 Mar

[ By Steph in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

Varini Optical Illusions 1

As you approach a curve in a parking garage, suddenly a large abstract object seems to float in space just ahead, as if overlaid on top of a static image rather than a three-dimensional setting. You’re not hallucinating: it’s a painted geometric illusion by artist Felice Varini, who has a vast portfolio of similar works spanning decades.

Varini Optical Illusions 2

The Paris-based Swiss artist has painted dozens of settings, public and private, indoors and out, that come together into an optical illusion only when viewed from a certain vantage point. From every other perspective, the markings seem random and chaotic, splashed across railings, walls, ceilings and streets.

Varini Optical Illusions 3

Varini Optical Illusions 4

The effect is so disconcerting at times, that people coming across images of the large-scale paintings often assume they have been Photoshopped. But once you see photos of the scene from different angles, the magic of Varini’s work (and others like it) becomes clear.

Varini Optical Illusions 5

In order to be appreciated and understood, these anamorphic illusions require action – movement – on the part of the viewer. But if you never bother to explore the scene in order to make the image come together, Varini doesn’t mind.

Varini Optical Illusions 6

“The viewer can be present in the work, but as far as I am concerned he may go through it without noticing the painting at all. If he is aware of the work, he might observe it from the vantage point and see the complete shape. But he might look from other points of views where he will not be able to understand the painting because the shapes will be fragmented and the work too abstract. Whichever way, that is ok with me.”

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Body Paint Illusions Transform Human Models into Animals

22 Mar

[ By Steph in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

Body Paint Illusion Marwedel 1
Intricately painted and carefully posed, the human bodies serving as canvases for artist Gesine Marwedel are virtually unrecognizable as they morph into swans, flamingos and iguanas. The 25-year-old German painter employs performance artists to bring her colorful illusions to life, leaving their faces and other body parts visible as part of each composition.

Body Paint Illusion Marwedel 2

The ability to contort into unusual positions is a crucial element of making each of these incredible three-dimensional paintings work. Each photograph depicts not only the painted animal, but also its grace and movement.

Body Paint Illusion Marwedel 3

Body Paint Illusion Marwedel 4

“Body painting is not just paint on a living canvas, it is picking up the body shapes in a subject and the painting on the body,” Marwedel told PSFK. “It is the transformation of a human being into a breathing, moving, living work of art.”

Body Paint Illusion Marwedel 5

Body Paint Illusion Marwedel 6

Marwedel began to explore body art after providing therapy for disabled and autistic children through speech and music. See more of her work at her website, or in person at the World Body Painting Festival, to be held in Austria in July 2013.

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Marvelous Muralist Makes Giant-Sized Street Art Illusions

19 Feb

[ By Steph in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

Sam3 Giant Murals Street Art 1

The facades of entire buildings are transformed with the larger-than-life painted silhouettes of Madrid-based street artist Sam3. Known for both the enormous scale of his work and the graphic simplicity of his figures, Sam3 gives decaying urban buildings a sense of mystery and wonder.

Sam3 Giant Murals Street Art 5 Sam3 Giant Murals Street Art 6

Some works span billboards all over the city, such as a series that spells out the word ‘subliminal.’ Others stretch out across massive apartment complexes – like a giant man stepping out of the sky to pet a cat.

Sam3 8

Sam3 Giant Murals Street Art 3 Sam3 Giant Street Art Murals 4

Many of Sam3′s works are surreal, with celestial elements. An alleyway mural in Vienna depicts a man being peeled like a potato by two gigantic hands.

Sam3 Giant Murals Street Art 2 Sam3 Giant Murals Street Art 7

Sam3′s street art can be seen all over the world, from his home state of Spain to a skyscraper in Atlanta. See more of his work at Sam3.es and Street Art Utopia.

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Marvelous Muralist Makes Giant-Sized Street Art Illusions

05 Feb

[ By Steph in Art & Street Art & Graffiti. ]

Sam3 Giant Murals Street Art 1

The facades of entire buildings are transformed with the larger-than-life painted silhouettes of Madrid-based street artist Sam3. Known for both the enormous scale of his work and the graphic simplicity of his figures, Sam3 gives decaying urban buildings a sense of mystery and wonder.

Sam3 Giant Murals Street Art 5 Sam3 Giant Murals Street Art 6

Some works span billboards all over the city, such as a series that spells out the word ‘subliminal.’ Others stretch out across massive apartment complexes – like a giant man stepping out of the sky to pet a cat.

Sam3 8

Sam3 Giant Murals Street Art 3 Sam3 Giant Street Art Murals 4

Many of Sam3′s works are surreal, with celestial elements. An alleyway mural in Vienna depicts a man being peeled like a potato by two gigantic hands.

Sam3 Giant Murals Street Art 2 Sam3 Giant Murals Street Art 7

Sam3′s street art can be seen all over the world, from his home state of Spain to a skyscraper in Atlanta. See more of his work at Sam3.es and Street Art Utopia.

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Camouflage Posters Turn 3D Reality into 2D Illusions

16 Oct

[ By Steph in Art & Photography & Video. ]

Blurring the line between reality and fiction, this urban camouflage photo series by French photographer Fred Lebain features posters that blend in almost perfectly with their environments. Lebain visited New York and took photographs of various scenes, went home to France and turned them into posters, and then came back and installed the posters were the photos were taken.

Called ‘A Spring in New York’, the series reads like slight blips in time, where scenes are glimpsed on a day not too long past, when few things were different – perhaps the amount of sunlight, or the number of people in the background.

The posters curling at the edges or blowing slightly in the wind lends a curious effect to the final images. The scene is wrinkling; reality is threatening to peel away like paper.

In some scenes, the posters really do act as camouflage, hiding part of the photographer so that only hands or feet can be seen.

The series is reminiscent of Liu Bolin, ‘The Invisible Man’, a Beijing-based artist who paints himself into his surroundings so convincingly that it’s often hard to spot him. See more examples of urban camouflage, including body painting and bizarre urban camo suits.

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