One of Santiago, Chile’s most congested streets became a colorful pedestrian promenade full of urban art after a 30-day transformation led by artist Dasic Fernández. Now, the city is fighting to keep it. The 400-yard stretch of road adjacent to Santiago’s government palace and main square was never meant to be a permanent pedestrian zone; it was temporarily renovated while closed to traffic for construction on the Santiago Metro. Now locals and the mayor want to keep it that way, but it’s uncertain whether the installation will remain in place.

The pedestrianized promenade opened on December 21st, 2017 and was an instant hit, with locals streaming through to gaze at the art, congregate and patronize nearby businesses. It didn’t cost the city any money, since Fernández was able to raise $550,000 in funding from businesses in exchange for exposure of their logos. The biggest feature is a 35,500-square-foot mural painted right onto the asphalt, which extends nearly four blocks.

“The first is inspired by the pre-Hispanic history of Chile, and begins at the intersection between Compañía and Bandera streets, where the Museum of Pre-Columbian Art is located; the second reflects the current diversity of the country, triggered by immigration and cultural changes; and the third, between Moneda and Agustinas streets, seeks to portray the future through more modern furniture and stronger colors,” says CityLab in a new feature on the project.

But what happens when construction is complete? The Chilean Ministry of Transport will have to decide whether to open it to cars again. Mayor Felipe Alessandri hopes it will remain a pedestrian route, and says he’d preserve it ‘forever’ if it were up to him.

Filling the city with art by literally painting right onto the streets makes it feel like everyone is immersed in an illustration, acting out some kind of larger-than-life story. Formerly bare patches of asphalt and concrete get splashes of color, patterns and imagery that can be humorous, fun or politically pointed. Roadsworth is among the street artists best known for this style, and recently debuted a new piece referencing the refugee crisis.

“A new record: as of today, the UN has counted 65 million refugees in the world,” he says. “I painted this in recognition of this tragic fact. Walls and Fences are for painting and climbing not for dividing and obstructing.”

In this particular mural, painted onto a street in Montréal, passersby are confronted with massive hands cling to a chain-link fence, effectively forcing them to recognize and think about the subject matter.

Other Roadsworth murals are more playful, like a stop-animation squirrel that appears to run down the street when the images are stacked in a GIF, and a crosswalk that has been turned into a rope bridge. A giant pink ice cream cone melts onto the pavement.

Prints can be purchased at Roadsworth.com, and you can keep up with the artist’s work on Instagram.

A broad stripe of bright paint in a zig-zag pattern contrasts with muted, understated urban surroundings in the latest urban art installation by artist duo Sabina Lang and Daniel Baumann. Working together since 1990 as Lang-Baumann, the artists bring unexpected visuals to public spaces. Street Painting #7 in Rennes, France will be visible in the heart of town until May 25, 2014.

The installation was applied directly to the asphalt using road marking paint, introducing a new sense of vibrancy and modernity to this historic city block. The painting obliterates expectations for the type of public art that’s acceptable for this kind of setting.

Six previous geometric street paintings have graced smaller, even quainter communities like the picturesque Vercorin, Switzerland, as well as major cities like Moscow.

Other works by Lang-Baumann are similarly disruptive, including inflatable parasitic sculptures clinging to the sides of buildings, and terrifying stairs to nowhere that will make your stomach drop just from looking at the photos.

As you approach a curve in a parking garage, suddenly a large abstract object seems to float in space just ahead, as if overlaid on top of a static image rather than a three-dimensional setting. You’re not hallucinating: it’s a painted geometric illusion by artist Felice Varini, who has a vast portfolio of similar works spanning decades.

The Paris-based Swiss artist has painted dozens of settings, public and private, indoors and out, that come together into an optical illusion only when viewed from a certain vantage point. From every other perspective, the markings seem random and chaotic, splashed across railings, walls, ceilings and streets.

The effect is so disconcerting at times, that people coming across images of the large-scale paintings often assume they have been Photoshopped. But once you see photos of the scene from different angles, the magic of Varini’s work (and others like it) becomes clear.

In order to be appreciated and understood, these anamorphic illusions require action – movement – on the part of the viewer. But if you never bother to explore the scene in order to make the image come together, Varini doesn’t mind.

“The viewer can be present in the work, but as far as I am concerned he may go through it without noticing the painting at all. If he is aware of the work, he might observe it from the vantage point and see the complete shape. But he might look from other points of views where he will not be able to understand the painting because the shapes will be fragmented and the work too abstract. Whichever way, that is ok with me.”

Not only did they paint it red, but pink, purple, blue and yellow as well. Don’t blame the drivers (and the odd pedestrian), and don’t question their sobriety either – all were unasked, oblivious participants in Berlin’s most infamous guerilla art attack to date.

“Is This Vandalism or Art?”

(image via: WonderHowTo)

“Ist das Vandalismus oder Kunst?,” asked Berlin newspaper Bezirk following one of the city’s most notorious guerilla art attacks. Over a year later, the answer still isn’t clear (though the city’s Rosenthaler Platz is) and either are the motives of the bike-riding, paint-splashing guerilla artists from IEPE & the Anonymous Crew.

(images via: Brenna Urban and The Circus)

The day began like most any other, in most any other city in most any first-world country. Traffic lights blinked from green to yellow to red and back again; cars (green, yellow, red and more) obediently followed their robotic commands. There was no indication anything out of the ordinary was about to happen… and then something extraordinary happened!

(image via: AllTransport)

From north, south, east and west, groups of bike-riders converged on Berlin’s Rosenthaler Platz. Some brought buckets and lined boxes filled with water-based, environmentally-friendly paint (about 500 liters in all), others began pasting posters on street signs and other easily viewable surfaces ranged around the wide intersection.

(images via: Brenna Urban and Bloodyloud)

The posters advised all and sundry that the paint was “wassloslich, schadstoff-frei, biologisch, abbaubar” (washable, pollution-free, organic and biodegradable): facts of import not only to city authorities but to the car-owners whose vehicles were to become unexpected participants in the anarchist/artists’ scheme.

Rubber Brushes, Asphalt Canvas

(image via: Loso)

Coordinating their actions to the traffic signals’ changing colors, the IEPE artists brought their containers of paint into the center of the platz, spilling the contents in front of dozens of bemused drivers who had obediently stopped for red lights.

(images via: Claire Caudwell, WonderHowTo and Brenna Urban)

When the signals changed to green and the drivers shifted their feet from brake pedal to accelerator – what else could they do, after all? – an abstract artwork was born. As for the drivers, though their actions were as always their resumes suddenly shifted – they were artists now, “drive-thru artists” to coin a phrase.

(image via: The Circus)

With their paint dumped and posters pasted, the guerilla artists from IEPE & the Anonymous Crew quickly melted away into the bright Berlin sunshine. Did the treads of their bicycle tires and sneakers leave an imprint, a signature as it were, in the sticky new substrate covering generous portions of Rosenthaler Platz? Did it matter? On April 25th, 2010, all were artists. Just being there was to be a part of what was happening.

(images via: Creative Action, Squidoo and WonderHowTo)

Time passed, traffic passed, and a painting began to grow. Colors shifted, strengthened, melded, faded, and a technicolor portrait of a technological society gradually took form. Traffic patterns once invisible became obvious, the actual pathways of people in motion superseded the flat, gray, inorganic boundaries laid down in blueprints stored away in dusty shelving units. Rosenthaler Platz had shown its true colors and the effect was that of a rainbow arcing across the sky after dark storm clouds had fled.

This video, taken while the paint was still wet, gives a Berliner’s-eye view of what it must have been like to observe a painting in progress from the inside.

Hot Town, Color In The City

(image via: WonderHowTo)

Those responsible for the April 25th, 2010 guerilla art event at Berlin’s Rosenthaler Platz have never fully explained the purpose of their so-called “art attack” on one of the city’s busiest transportation arteries. Perhaps they feel no need to do so: if the event was intended to make people think, why tell them WHAT to think?

(images via: Brenna Urban and Creative Action)

The conjecture above fits with the nature of the art (or vandalism) itself. No one could foresee the exact shape, size and structure of the platz pavement painting as the actual “painters” were the random traffic patterns of central Berlin. The act of giving the process of creating art over to the people who live within its frame may provide clues as to the motives of those who planned the action itself.

(image via: The Rathaus)

Was this explosion of urban art an effort to Reclaim The Streets for the people, or at least an attempt to show people the streets were theirs to reclaim? If so, Rosenthaler Platz was an ideal location.

(images via: WonderHowTo and Loso)

Formerly a bustling urban melting pot near the center of old Berlin, the neighborhood had barely begun recovering from wartime destruction when it was marginalized by the building of the Berlin Wall. Cut off from half of its roadways and suddenly marooned on the outskirts of East Berlin, the platz was deprived of its lifeblood: people. Even the subway stopped stopping there – the U-Bahn stop beneath the platz was a “ghost station” from 1961 to 1989.

(images via: Brenna Urban and The Bohmerian)

With German reunification came a second chance for Rosenthaler Platz, a way to wipe the slate clean and start again. Will the platz serve as a locus of cultural ferment or a lifeless intersection for vehicular traffic? Will the plaza’s former shops, stores, galleries and cafes revive to their former prominence or will faceless corporations exploit the power of the almighty Deutschmark (er, Euro) to intersperse office space whose life, if any, is turned inward upon itself? The battle lines are drawn… in red, pink, purple, blue and yellow.