Worthy of a double-take twice over, these convincing wall artworks reveal imaginary depths and amazing arrays of color … all seemingly hidden behind dull peeling paint and inside innocuously crumbling facades.

While he does not say much about himself, 1010 is both a gallery and street artist  in Germany with a passion for surreal figures, geometric illusions and other visual trickery.

While the shapes are simple the shadows are incredibly complex, each layer built up with layers of color and light.

This particular series of optical illusion ‘holes’ spans both sides of his portfolio – smaller-scale works are framed and hung in galleries while larger-scale installations are set in rough exterior urban landscapes.

His other pieces that include characters like birds and snakes are of a similarly simplified style, but their cartoonish nature masks careful color and tone selection as well as time-consuming implementation.

A fantastic feat of architectural trickery, this anti-gravity ante-room installation appears to hover in thin air and open up into nothingness. It sports a single point of contact with the ground below – a ladder propped against it, ostensibly placed to access the amazing space.

The piece was designed by Leandro Erlich (some images by Martin Argyroglo) of Argentina for an annual art festival in France, but the artist is known elsewhere as well for his vertigo-inducing work.

The ladder is the secret behind supporting this tenuous chunk of building, being much stronger than it first appears. A set of furniture stacked on it appears to be waiting to be taken to the top.

The Shaft was set in the Sean Kelly Gallery of New York and took visitors through a sideways version of an elevator void. Stuck Elevator at the same gallery gives one a peek at one of those jarring experiences one hopes to avoid for live.

Using mirrors, Erlich has also turned entire buildings on their side and made them into interactive urban playgrounds, as covered here previously and seen above.

Without proof, it makes for a tough sell – what looks like four photographs arranged into a square is indeed a single shot, meticulously staged, as only accompanying images and videos will convince.

Bela Borsodi created and photographed the scene for use as an album cover. And while it is still hard to trick your mind into seeing the reality of the overlap, there are subtle cues – certain objects that span multiple quadrants and lead the eye between them. The animation below shows the stages of setup and construction in a kind of stop-motion animation format.

About the artist: “Bela Borsodi was born in Vienna 1966. After studying graphic design and fine art he started to work as a photographer. In 1992 Bela moved to New York and in 1999 he focused on still life photography, which is still the main direction of his work. Bela lives and works in New York.” He has worked for editorial clients including The New York Times and Wired Magazine and advertising clients including Hermes, Puma, Nike and Freitag.