“Painting” with Packing Tape

We’ve seen art created from a wide variety of media, but nothing quite like this. As a matter of fact, if you had to guess how these were created just by looking at them, you’d probably have a hard time figuring it out. Relying on little more than brown packing tape, an Xacto and the filtering of light behind a translucent surface, Amsterdam-based artist Max Zorn’s work is awe-inspiring. The nuance in shading he achieves by layering tape is astounding all on its own. Never mind Zorn’s ability to manipulate the tape so intricately. It’s interesting how these works, composed of such an unexpected and artless material, are so beautiful. Zorn clearly has a penchant for the past, as indicated by his choice of subjects for the majority of his work. Interestingly, Zorn’s fondness for packing tape began as street art, as he describes in his own words: “There’s a lot of great street art by day, but it disappears after dark. I wanted to come up with urban art that uses nighttime as a setting, and there was nothing more inviting than the street lamps in Amsterdam. In the beginning I used packing tape to fill in larger sections of my marker drawings. Once I hung them on street lamps, the light’s effect opened up new ideas with ditching markers and just using tape.”

Via maxzorn.com and YouTube

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGqo7e-FN0s&w=560&h=315]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvj3KrdU4Fk&w=560&h=315]