Picture walking into a room where the walls bend, the floor twists, and the ceiling ripples. Austrian artist Peter Kogler designs installations, like Next, shown here, that transform ordinary spaces into hypnotizing optical illusions.
To make the design, Kogler digitally rendered patterns of intersecting graphic lines. Then he painted them on every surface in the room, creating an immersive experience that challenges viewers’ perceptions of the space. “The structure of the image completely surrounds the beholder,” Kogler says. “In a sense, you are standing in the picture, and the work can be experienced physically.”
Kogler rendered the design in the space using black paint on white walls to emphasize the pattern’s striking visual effects. “The black-and-white grid provides a maximum contrast which has a very strong visual presence,” he says. Though the design is two-dimensional, the high-contrast color scheme and clever patterns create a disorienting illusion of more than two dimensions.