The Triangle had its first blockbuster art show of the season Saturday, and it wasn't even in a museum.

More than 1,000 people streamed into Durham's revitalizing downtown to see Georges Rousse's art installations, overwhelming volunteers who expected fewer than half as many.

"I'm completely flabbergasted," said Frank Konhaus, who with his wife, Ellen Cassilly, lured Rousse from France. "I've never seen this many people in downtown Durham in my life, much less to see art."

Rousse's colorful trompe l'oeil (French for trick of the eye) installations only work from one vantage, so people stood in line patiently in hot, stuffy buildings to glimpse the world from Rousse's point of view. To approximate the wide-angle lens Rousse uses to photograph his temporary installations, they peered through special lenses or boards fitted with peepholes.

In the now-unused Chesterfield building, where cigarettes were manufactured until 2000, Rousse and a team of carpenters and painters built a freestanding tunnel without a ceiling. The left wall undulates, and there's not a right angle in sight. But seen from the right spot, it snaps into a majestically simple blue square. The team even painted blue the ice machine that stands in the middle of the room.

Outside on the sidewalk, Justin Staple and Leif Gann-Matzen, both seniors at Durham Academy, handed out a sort of treasure map to visitors. Anyone who visited three of the four Rousse sites could enter a drawing for dinner at Verde in Durham.

Both said they saw posters for the project at school but grew even more inspired after seeing Rousse lecture at Duke University's Nasher Museum of Art. They persuaded their own school to let them create a Rousse-inspired installation, which Gann-Matzen designed, in the art room.

Half a mile down the street, Kathleen Graves and her family visited the long-defunct Bargain Furniture store. New owners are turning it into shops and residences, but for the day, it was like a Disneyland for contemporary art. On the ground floor, Rousse built a black square that floats across two storefront window bays. Upstairs, he designed a massive blue circle that spilled so far down the room that visitors had to jump over part of the art installation to enter the room.

Rousse only works in places that are going through transformation -- about to be torn down, renovated or rehabilitated. Graves said the art had helped her appreciate the revitalization going on throughout downtown Durham. The entire downtown loop looks like a construction zone; across the street from Bargain Furniture, workers are almost finished laying the brick for a plaza in the center of downtown.

"It's neat to be able to walk through these construction sites with great new sidewalks, and more green space, and walking through the Central Park area and seeing these great little hidden gardens," Graves said. "It's happening."

Rousse himself was on vacation Saturday, his first day of rest since starting the project Sept. 4.

It's an apt symbol for the whole project that he's not around, even as the public wanders downtown with new appreciation. The unassuming artist and the equally unassuming organizers, Konhaus and Cassilly, inspired an army of more than 200 volunteers that seemed to materialize overnight. They transformed these neglected spaces not for their own glory but for Durham to enjoy.

On Tuesday, the final public showing will run from 5 to 8 p.m. There will be a chance to meet the artist at a reception at the Baldwin building on East Main Street. Rousse flies home Wednesday.