New York’s Museum of Art and Design is taking the world of miniatures out of your grandma’s living room and into the contemporary art realm.  Otherworldly: Optical Delusions and Small Realities is reworking the notion of this overlooked art form and embracing the tweezer-wielding artists behind it. Miniatures master Frank Kunert builds dystopian settings, like towering and bleak apartment blocks.  They are anything but old lady.

As well as keeping to their craft roots, Otherwordly also taps into digital territory with artists Jitsuro Mase and Tom Nagae’s collaborative piece i3DG_Palm Top Theatre, which turns your iPhone into a miniature 3D stage using a series of mirror. We’re loving the introduction of miniatures as a legitimate art form, dispelling their previous stuffy preconceptions and embracing their oddity.

Miniatures warp our sense of reality and push the boundaries of perception, and reminds us of the tilt-shift film trend that we saw blow up in ’07-’08.  With the growing trend of all things moving toward an augmented reality spectrum, its clear our ideas of reality and space are going to continue to be manipulated. Otherworldly: Optical Delusions and Small Realities is on now until September 18th at MAD.