Art

JR and Liu Bolin join forces to make the TED dream team

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29075_h500w820gtThe image above is classic Liu Bolin — the artist painted exactingly to blend in with the scene behind him. Liu Bolin: The invisible man Liu Bolin: The invisible man (Watch his talk from TED2013, “The invisible man.”) But if you look closely, you will see that the man in the picture is not actually Bolin—the tell-tale Ray-Bans reveal that this is JR, the artist known for pasting large portraits into cityscapes. (Watch as JR poses his TED Prize-winning wish, “Use art to turn the world inside out.”) To add more layers of meta to this work, the finger and eye in the story-high poster belong to Bolin. And the arched door over which the poster is pasted? That’s the entrance to JR’s New York studio. The photo was snapped by Bolin, himself.

This image, called “JR Through the Eye of Liu Bolin,” is a true meeting of two TEDster minds. While the pair have been friends for 4 or 5 years, they collaborated on this piece in New York last September and only recently released the making-of video below. Watch it and get a glimpse of the playful sides of these two powerhouse artists.