Illusion art and lots of laughs await your family at Chiang Mai’s Art in Paradise
It is one thing to stand in the corner of a room. It is quite another to stand in the corner of a room, and look like you are trying to pull Thor’s hammer out of a rock while a massive volcanic erupts behind you. That illusion magic awaits at Art in Paradise Chiang Mai.
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Illusion scenes come alive for photos and videos
Yet throughout the floor-to-ceiling 130 paintings across six rooms of Chiang Mai’s Art in Paradise, the artists had created hyperreal scenes that came fully, 3D alive in photos and videos.
When I think back to my memory of seeing us on surf boards riding big waves, being trapped inside an hourglass, hugging an elephant’s trunk, or standing above a bottomless crack in the floor, I know what my eye could perceive. I could see the flatness of the floor. Or the converging corner lines of floors and walls.
“It is one thing to stand in the corner of a room. It is quite another to stand in the corner of a room, and look like you are trying to pull Thor’s hammer out of a rock while a massive volcanic erupts behind you.”
But in the eye of the camera, reality shifted. The lines fell away. The flat floor suddenly did have a huge, abyssal rip in it—and anyone could be forgiven both for being there, yet having a touch of vertigo when they saw the photos.
Multiple locations each offer their own distinctive experience
From its beginnings in Pattaya, Thailand, in 2012, today Art in Paradise has a location in Bangkok in addition to the Chiang Mai installation, which opened in 2013. The interactive illusion art is made not only to wow, but to be played with. Creative scenerunner Jang Kyu Suk works with around 14 other artists to create each painting and its illusory perspective effect—but not just with paint.
Our family experience visiting Art in Paradise Chiang Mai with kids
We dashed from scene to scene, giggling and marveling as we looked at each setup both with our eyes and in the camera. In a room devoted to cityscapes, we would stand in front of London Bridge on one wall, then at another seem like we were ready to go up the Eiffel Tower in Paris. A room riffing on classical paintings might have, say, a teacup out of frame, there for you to hold and be part of the scene.
Scenes from history and pure imagination
Connor perched on the high branches of a tree in a fantastical forest, where a pair of wings waited for him. Aster caught a fish in her mouth, as if she were a wee penguin being fed by the parent standing above her. We hid behind the beanstalk so a cracked-tooth giant could find the Jack he was looking for. We opened portals to other worlds, stood with Egyptian gods and goddesses, and wandered the ruins of Angkor in Cambodia (a bit of foreshadowing, as it turns out, but we’ll get to that in a couple of weeks).
Passing into another room, it wasn’t just the perspective that changed. In a row of rooms with a fourth wall cut away, upside-down furniture hung from the ceiling, designed for some rather fun poses once you turned the image right side up.
LEGO cityscape
In the penultimate room, a long, deep, LEGO cityscape showed everything from a food market on the street, to the Hogwarts Castle from Harry Potter. Made from over 228,000 LEGO pieces, the massive scene took 8 months to build. A train clacked by us, on tracks running parallel to the barrier separating the LEGO world from our world. Suddenly, the room’s lights dimmed—and the city’s lights came on, as the scene changed from day to night.
The train reached Hogwarts in the left rear corner, went through a tunnel, and disappeared. Nearly a minute later, the train emerged in the right rear corner, where it had run along the other side of the back wall.
Like immersive, experiential art? Art in Paradise Chiang Mai is for you
It’s one thing to talk about how travel gives you fresh perspective But Art in Paradise gave us not only new perspective, but vivid memories of made-up scenes. Bangkok and Pattaya, your 3D wonderlands are next.
