Mighty Optical Illusions » China

Chalk Drawing That Won Guinness

Vurdlak — Wed, 25 May 2011 21:34:20 +0000

I can’t believe we missed this one – Qi Xinghua is a Chinese 3D Chalk artist (first in his country) whose painting entitled Lions Gate Gorge earned him an entry in the Guinness Book of Records for the largest 3D painting in the world! I’m not exactly sure how fresh this information is, as I could swear we’ve seen bigger. Still, with 23 meters in width, 32 meters in length and over 6 meters in height, we can’t ignore hard work Qi invested into this masterpiece. This 3D painting was presented at the Baiyan Wanda Plaza shopping-mall in Guangzhou (China), and it took Qi more than a month to finish the project. Oh, and one more interesting fact: apparently some people reported dizziness, during their “rope balancing”.

Qi Xinghua says he has calculated three different formulas that can be applied on all paintings of varying sizes. He also added (quoted below):

To put it in the simplest way, it’s reversed vision, which is also called inverse-perspective. From our normal vision, nearby objects are big and far away ones are small. I use the opposite method to make far away objects big and close objects small. In this way, a two-dimensional painting turns three-dimensional.

Don’t ask me why, but I have a feeling we’ll be seeing much more of this artist’s creations in the coming weeks! Even after seeing so many awesome pavement drawings, I can’t seem to perceive below pavement as a flat surface. How about you?

China’s “Invisible Man” to Wow Paris

Vurdlak — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:36:49 +0000

Consider this post as an attachment/update to previous Liu Bolin series. By now, we all know Liu’s incredible talent to camouflage himself. In the previous sets we’ve seen him in focus, but this is the first photo I found where Liu is photographed from a greater distance. It’s almost impossible to notice him. Check out the gallery beneath for additional sessions Liu participated in. The artist dubbed the “invisible man” is bringing his mind-bending pieces back to Europe. Liu will exhibit his unique photographs, in which he paints himself so as to “disappear” into his surroundings, at the YU Gallery in Paris in October. Liu, 36, has been known to spend up to 10 painstaking hours at each location — adding fine detail to his entire body until he is virtually undetectable. The chameleon experienced resistance from his own government, and in 2005 his Beijing studio was forcibly shut down over his political works.

We all know Liu's incredible talent for camouflage. It is almost impossible to spot him from such a distance.

Some of the Liu Bolin’s camouflages you might have missed:

The Invisible Man: Liu Bolin

Vurdlak — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:39:41 +0000

Probably you read me by now… As hard as I force myself to put new illusion each day (mostly because of the widget’s name “Optical Illusion of The Day“), you have to take into account I’m still on my vacation. Thus in reality, new post is written up every 1.5 to 2 days. I hope you’ll live this through for few more days before I return home. Anyhow, today I’m giving you this monster gallery of Liu Bolin’s art installations. This month, one year ago I posted 9 photos of Liu Bolin’s incredible camouflage artwork. It appears that in the meantime Liu was very active, so today I bring you 10 new photos of his disappearing attempts. I know how some of you don’t prefer our galleries, but trust me – this is the best way to bring page-load time to the minimum, and lower the cost of our bandwidth (more pages, more ad impressions). Please reply which camouflage was your favorite!

Liu Bolin is able to blend into any surroundings - no matter how complicated they might be!

Liu Bolin’s Camouflage-artwork Gallery

Camouflage Art by Liu Bolin

Vurdlak — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 09:21:00 +0000

Jessica sent me an email recently, explaining illusions she found: “I was browsing some internet weblogs, when I came across an interesting body paintings done by Liu Bolin of Beijing. I find it has in interesting message behind it.” When I read Jessica’s email, I quickly checked her submission, and boy, was I amazed. This surely has to be one of the best examples of urban camouflage. I have attached her submitted photos, and you can see all ten of them if you continue inside this article.

The artist, Liu Bolin is a young Beijing based artist who has exhibited primarily in China until now. Recently, he finished up a show at Eli Klein fine art in New York showcasing a variety of his pieces including some form the series ‘camouflage’. The collection is an exploration of human nature and animal instincts which features Chinese citizens painted to blend into their surroundings. The subjects are covered head to toe in paint, camouflaging themselves in front of the Chinese flag, a billboard or downtown Beijing. Last three photos greatly remind of Invisible Cloak, we already covered.