What’s the secret behind these eye-popping street art illusions?
Eye-popping street art illusions —
Street art across the globe strives to bring life to the dull concrete walls of our urban environments. But few artists manage to do it quite like this.
A new generation of artists is transforming two-dimensional walls into 3-D monsters which burst from building-sides and into the streets.
From Louisiana to Lisbon, these artists are operating across the globe and have bags of tricks to confound the eye and make the impossible seem real.
Courtesy Odeith
Eye-popping 3D street art illusions —
TSF Crew
French crew TSF are masters of the hovering "anamorphic" image. In a Paris underpass they've summoned a crying ghost, grown a magnificent tree (and chopped it down), and created this: ghostly masks hovering in a slash of color.
Courtesy TSF crew
Eye-popping 3D street art illusions —
TSF Crew
The crew uses the same trick on a rockier surface to create this robot -- wrapping paint around walls, floors, and work surfaces to achieve the incredible illusion.
Courtesy TSF crew
Eye-popping 3D street art illusions —
TSF Crew
Want to know how these are done? Moving sideways reveals how the trick is achieved. But this is just one of the skills our artists have in their arsenal.
Courtesy TSF crew
Eye-popping street art illusions —
Mehdi Ghadyanloo
Iranian Medhi Ghadyanloo's canvas is the skyline. His illusions make use of the vast blue expanses beyond to create windows to other -- more magical -- worlds.
Courtesy Mehdi Ghadyanloo
Eye-popping street art illusions —
Mehdi Ghadyanloo
Careful on Tehran's roads: Ghadyanloo has painted over 100 murals across the Iranian capital, giving unsuspecting drivers good reason to do a double take, as the fantasy blends in with the real.
Courtesy Mehdi Ghadyanloo
Eye-popping street art illusions —
Mehdi Ghadyanloo
Continued international sanctions against Iran restrict the availability of contemporary art in the capital, with Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art blaming the measures for preventing it from displaying its $2.2 billion "bunker" of Western art. Lucky, then, that Ghadyanloo's street-side works are available for all.
Courtesy Mehdi Ghadyanloo
What's the secret behind these eye-popping street art illusions? —
Alexis Facca
Brussels-based Alexis Facca's clean, room-size shapes set her apart in a world of complex, curving designs. The French artist often creates tiny worlds from folding paper in her day job, but here she takes her art to a different scale.
Courtesy Alexis Facca
What's the secret behind these eye-popping street art illusions? —
Alexis Facca
The wall-filling geometric shapes resemble perfect origami creations but transplant them onto rough, crumbling buildings. The 3-D effect makes the simple shape appear to rise out of the rubble.
Courtesy Alexis Facca
What's the secret behind these eye-popping street art illusions? —
Alexis Facca
She can often be found working with friend and fellow artist Romain Bordes. Another clue, here, to how the duo create that "anamorphic" effect.
Courtesy Alexis Facca
Eye-popping street art illusions —
MTO
Not much is known about French hyperrealist street artist MTO. Media reports list him as living in Berlin, but he says that's no longer true. He also rejects claims he's had famous celebrities sit for him as "pure BS."
Courtesy mto
Eye-popping street art illusions —
MTO We do know that he's no stranger to controversy, though, with Kentucky residents claiming an MTO mural contained gang symbols (a claim rejected by the artist and local police). No questions over this Aldous Huxley-influenced piece -- an awesome, perception-transforming collaboration with compatriot Iemza, which uses the whole room to trick the eye.
Courtesy mto
What's the secret behind these eye-popping street art illusions? —
MTO
His most recent "No Art for poor kids" highlights the plight of Jose De Diego Middle School, on the edge of Miami's Wynwood gallery district, where last week's Art Basel parties kicked off. There, on the doorstep of the world's glitziest art-buying festival, a tight budget means there's no money to hire an art teacher and the 600 students are denied access to art.
Courtesy MTO
Eye-popping 3D street art illusions —
Odeith
Sergio Odeith takes his talent into the city's dark corners. He is the Portuguese genius behind the crocodile-topped pop-up writing on the first slide, and a ton of other mind-bending 3-D tricks.
Courtesy Odeith
Eye-popping 3D street art illusions —
Odeith
The Lisbon-dweller has painted large-scale murals for Shell, Coca-Cola, Samsung and Portuguese football champions Benfica, but his personal projects -- often appearing to cut through a 90˚ corner and hang in midair -- have won the biggest praise online.
Courtesy Odeith
Eye-popping 3D street art illusions —
Replete
Leeds-based Replete was a video game artist for 10 years, working for Nintendo, Sega, Sony and Capcom on arcade classics including "Streetfighter 2" and "Road Rash." Having worked in almost every other artistic medium since then, he is now exploring street art using an unlikely canvas...
Courtesy Replete
Eye-popping 3D street art illusions —
Replete
Replete uses transparent plastic food wrap. He explains that the bombs are painted anamorphically on the floor and the jet is painted on several layers of plastic wrap spread across different layers, set up to 10 meters apart.
Courtesy Replete
Eye-popping 3D street art illusions —
Replete
The Brit is capable of a mesmerizing corner of his own -- creating this with not a sheet of plastic wrap in sight.
Courtesy Replete
Eye-popping 3D street art illusions —
Peeta
Italian Manuel Di Rita is known for creating masterful, street-art styled PVC sculptures, so you'd be excused for thinking this is his latest plastic creation. But his spray paint creations match the 3-D craft.
Courtesy Peeta
Eye-popping street art illusions —
Peeta
The Venice-born artist -- who goes by the name Peeta -- started writing graffiti in 1993 and says he has long been inspired by Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, whose iconic organic creations resemble his own.
