By Margherita Cole on June 12, 2023

This artist creates 3D murals that look like shapes and colors are traveling between dimensions.

Tucked into the corner of the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum is a portal to another world. Los Angeles-based artist Erika Lizée tailored this three-dimensional painting specifically to the site, making it look as though a fantastical image is suspended in front of the walls. The inspiration for this surreal work of art comes from Lizée’s interest in numbers and the interconnectedness of the world.

Titled Seed of Life, the massive installation is rendered in a limited blue color palette. It looks as though a chain of swirls is flowing in or maybe out of an opening in the wall, leaving room for many interpretations by the viewer. Either way, it gives off a distinct impression of the fantastical. “I imagine gallery walls as thresholds between different realms or states of existence, between the visible and the invisible, between this physical plane we inhabit and otherworldly planes beyond our awareness,” she tells My Modern Met. “The use of illusion in my work is important, as it gives rise to simultaneous feelings of wonder and uncertainty in viewers.”

Lizée has been studying numbers and sacred geometry since 2016, prompting a series of paintings based on each number. Seed of Life, for instance, is inspired by the number six […]

More: Massive Mural Installations Look Like Portals to Another Dimension