Edgar Mueller is a master of street painting that uses the street as a canvas. He paints over large areas of urban public life and gives them a new appearance, that way challenging the perceptions of passers-by. If one looks from the right spot, its three-dimensional painting becomes the perfect illusion. In one of his apocalyptic scenario, a family desperately struggle to cross what remains of a street. They hold hands while balancing on islands of tarmac. Below them a rushing urban river laps against rocks that glow with volcanic intensity. But, of course, neither of these scenes is what they appear. They are giant optical illusions conceived by this German artist. Together with five assistants, he spent five days, working 12 hours a day, to create the 250 square metre image of the crevasse. This art, viewed from the correct angle, appears to be 3D. He then persuaded passers-by to complete the illusion by pretending the gaping hole was real. The artist used the same technique to create the street-turned-river scene in the western German city of Geldern. ‘I wanted to play with positives and negatives to encourage people to think twice about everything they see,’ he said. Mueller, 40, used acrylic wall paint to create the scene. He trained a camera lens on his work surface to help him fully visualize the idea before painting in the incredible detail to give an impression of depth on the flat surface. He added: ‘The conditions were difficult because if it started raining before a section had dried it could wash it all away.

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