DIMENSIONALIZING
Los Angeles based artist, Darel Carey, creates visual illusions in huge spaces. His current work ranges from abstract line drawings to covering walls, ceilings, and floors with lines of tape. Carey refers to his technique as “dimensionalizing,” because the lines can create spaces that look multidimensional. His website and Instagram feature mind-bending videos of time lapsed installations and views of each finished product.
While not all of Carey’s work is black and white, his most recent installations are done with black tape, against white walls. One of the craziest things about his work is the way he makes his artwork appear to curve around a flat space. As we already know, pieces of tape can not actually curve around a flat surface. Instead, each piece must be cut and then placed in lines. Carey strategically connects the straight lines of tape, creating the illusion of movement and three dimensional designs.
Unlike his most recent creations, Carey created a colored installation in his time-lapsed video titled, “Points of View: Different Perspectives.” Carey starts in the corner of a big room. He places red tape on the grey floor and continues to place tape on the two white walls that come together at the corner. He makes a three dimensional box-like shape with the red tape, and continues the same process with green, and then blue tape. Each three dimensional shape layers the other, creating a sense of unity and intertwinement. This particular piece is incredibly impressive, because of how many different ways it can be perceived. When photographed from the side, the designs appear to be stacked on top of each other, and coming out of the wall. From the front view, the designs appear as if they are going back into the wall, while some are still coming out at the viewer.
Darel Carey’s work is not only unique to himself, but it is unique due to the fact that it can appear differently depending on which angle it is looked at.