The paintings you can crawl inside: Trick Eye museum uses optical illusions to let visitors become part of a masterpiece

    Illusions are by Tromp l'oeil artists which translates into 'deceive the eye'
    Visitors are able to 'step inside' the paintings to take amusing photographs
    The paintings are part of an exhibition taking place in Seoul, South Korea


At first glance, these surreal photographs look like they could have been shot on a film set.
But they are, in fact, two dimensional painting that trick the viewer into thinking they exist in three-dimensions.
The paintings are the work of Tromp l'oeil artists, which translates from French into 'deceive the eye'.



At first glance, these surreal photographs look like they could have been shot on a film set. But they are, in fact, two dimensional painting that trick the viewer into thinking they exist in three-dimensions

 They are part of an exhibition at a museum in Seoul, South Korea, allowing visitors to 'crawl into' the paintings to take amusing, and often bizarre, photographs.


Sitting inside a monster's mouth, catching money falling from a truck, and even getting peed on,  are all possible at the exhibition.
The Trick Eye Museum contains hundreds of oversized paintings enabling guests to orient themselves in perspective with the images.
For instance, visitors can seem as though they are hanging off a cliff or taking part in Botticelli's Birth of Venus.

If it wasn't for the steps at the bottom of this image, the illusion suggests that the spear has left the painting

The paintings are often amusing takes on classical work such as this one of The Scream by Edvard Munch
Some of the images take up entire rooms and have been turned on their side allowing the subject to look like they are climbing the walls or standing on the ceiling.
There are also giant paintings of sushi pieces reaching out from the frame and images of angel wings stretching out from the walls.
Trompe l'oeil has been around since ancient Greek and Roman times.
It first appeared in the legendary tale of two painters, Zeuxis and Parrhasius, who were trying to decide which of them, was the more accomplished artist.
They brought two covered canvases to show each other. Zeuxis revealed his first – an image of a bunch of grapes so life-like that birds pecked at the canvas.
Zeuxis then leaned over to pull the cover off Parrhasius's painting, only to find that the covering itself was the painting. Having been fooled by his rival's handiwork, Zeuxis admitted defeat.
During a time when ‘virtual reality’ is taking over the digital world, artists have shown that all you really needed is a brush and a canvas to trick the mind.