NYC Street Artist Aakash Nihalani Plays with Plain Old Tape

Aakash Nihalani takes the stationery store to town. Creating 3D images on two-dimensional surfaces, the New York-based artist uses an unlikely medium to create his street art — tape.

Immediately identifiable by his signature style of bright, bold lines, look-twice illusions and meticulous repetition, Nihalani conjures movement by playing with your expectations. Hailing from Little India, Jackson Heights in Queens, the artist grew up in Jersey and returned to NYC around 2004 to dive headfirst into art school. Now, Nihalani's works are highly recognised from NYC to Vienna — he's even done a residency at the De Kooning estate in the Hamptons.

Nihalani's work is created using cardboard, tape and a whole bunch of accuracy. Not one to shy away from experimenting with materials, Nihalani found his magic thread by chance. "I stumbled upon using tape by accident," he told Design Boom. "I was using a painter’s roll to attach some screen prints to the wall for a student exhibition. There was a pedestal in the space that was casting a cubic shadow on the floor that matched the shapes I was using in my prints, so I outlined the shadow with the tape. It all made sense in that moment."

Dotted around NYC, the perspective-warping works range from epic installations like Platforms, Drop and Dominos, attached to concrete walls and best posed in front of; to the most recent shirt-attached Landline series (which would be unbelievably cred-prompting worn to a party as a pair).

Budding artists, looks like it might be time you ditched Eckersley's for Officeworks.

Via Lost at E Minor and Design Boom. Images from the artist's website, Eye Scream Sunday.