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Ransom Riggs
Real-Life Invisibility Cloaks
by Ransom Riggs - February 25, 2008 - 7:55 AM

Dutch artist Desiree Palmen is no wallflower, but she knows a thing or two about blending into the background. That’s because her latest project is literally aimed at making people disappear — in plain sight. What we mean is this:

desk.jpg

Countless painstaking hours go into hand-painting the cotton suits she creates, meticulously crafted to blend into their surroundings. She got the idea, she says, from an increasing paranoia about 24-7 “Big Brother”-style surveillance: “I wanted to make a suit for the non-criminal citizen whose house is being watched 24 hours by street surveillance cameras. I’m also responding to a wish to disappear.”

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An interview with the UK’s Daily Mail reveals more about her technique:

It takes hours for her to paint the suits. First she takes photographs of the scene then, back in the studio, she meticulously transfers the detail on to the cotton suit with acrylic paints. The match of colour, texture, light and hue is extraordinarily accurate but the artist remains modest. “It’s never perfect,” she said. “But when it works that’s enough for me. I like the fact people can see it’s a real person in a suit and not a fake digital image.”

bookshelf.jpg

For more on Desiree Palmen, check out her website. And for more uncanny art, check out my blog entry on hyperrealist sculptor Duane Hansen.

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Comments (10)

  1. Totally AMAZING!

    posted by beth on 2-25-2008 at 10:11 am

  2. The last picture is possibly one of the coolest pieces of art I’ve ever seen.

    Simply incredible.

    posted by mac_24_seven on 2-25-2008 at 2:42 pm

  3. Where’s the dude’s head on the last one!? All I see are some legs and *maybe* a torso!

    posted by tommy on 2-25-2008 at 2:53 pm

  4. This reminds me of a scene in Be Kind Rewind where Jack Black and Mos Def do *exactly* this to camouflage themselves. It’s surreal in the movie, but pretty cool.

    posted by Gillian on 2-25-2008 at 3:49 pm

  5. OMG, I love this so much…I had to do a double and triple take on the first pic of the person sitting at the table…i never noticed them there until I started reading the story…I love eclectic art like this…

    There’s a Family Guy ep where the neighbors are all fighting – Joe, has blended himself w/ his house, his kid walks up, hears his voice, then Joe rolls away from the house and you can see he’s painted like the grass, driveway, wall, and then he rolls back and blends right into the house (being a cartoon, of course, they just remove Joe from the scene, but the gist is there)…

    posted by donner on 2-25-2008 at 4:08 pm

  6. WOW

    posted by MaxImum on 2-25-2008 at 4:44 pm

  7. I thought the first pic was a painting, and quite a neat one at that. I had to stare at it for several minutes to realize it was a photograph.

    The last one is incredible. And I can’t see her head! where is it?

    posted by Jenny on 2-25-2008 at 4:53 pm

  8. I can barely believe the last one is real. That’s incredible.

    posted by Kristina on 2-25-2008 at 5:17 pm

  9. I agree, just amazing. And where IS the head on the last one?

    posted by rookiemom on 2-26-2008 at 7:15 am

  10. As far as the last one goes. The top row of books seems to be a facade, and the person has their head down on the shelf. If you look at the protrusion that appears around the “ish” in Swedish ballet and follow that around, it seems to be the shoulders. Then in the book with a green semi circle on the binding, directly above it seems to be the head (or rather the hair) of the person modeling. Truly amazing work.

    posted by Ryan on 2-26-2008 at 9:53 am

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