Fun With Sculptures (9 Photos)

A forest seems to run through a steel bull, Earth drifts on water, and waste becomes wildlife.

These nine public sculptures use scale, illusion, materials, and place to make their surroundings feel different. Some were temporary or have since been removed.

More: Sculptures With Unique Creativity (24 Photos)

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🐂 Bull — By Korean sculptor Donghyun Kang (Kang Dong Hyun) 🇰🇷

Seen through the open steel lattice, the landscape becomes part of the bull. BLANK SPACE describes Kang’s animal sculptures as branch-like forms in which flora becomes fauna. The lowered head and forward sweep of the horns suggest motion, while the empty spaces keep the figure visually light.

💡 Nerd Fact: Kang’s principal series is called “The Forest of Coexistence.” The gallery notes that the stainless-steel rods create space both inside and outside each sculpture, and quotes the artist: “All life on earth is connected by an invisible string.” Here, the air inside the bull is part of the work rather than an absence.

More: Bull sculpture by Dong Hyun Kang

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🌿 “Ven a la Luz” / Come Into the Light — By Daniel Popper in Tulum, Mexico 🇲🇽

Daniel Popper turns the figure into an entrance. His official project page places Ven a la Luz at Ahau Tulum for Art With Me in 2018 and lists the 33-foot sculpture as steel, wood, rope, and natural fibers. Visitors pass through the opening in its chest, where the path and greenery complete the work.

💡 Nerd Fact: The title translates as “come into the light.” Popper later returned to this open-chested pose in Thrive (2020) and Hallow (2021), but his studio calls Ven a la Luz the most intricately embellished of the three. The Tulum work became an early version of a form he continued to develop.

More: Come in to Light — Wooden Sculpture by Daniel Popper in Tulum, Mexico

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🌍 “Floating Earth” — By Luke Jerram in London, UK 🇬🇧

Luke Jerram places the planet close enough to watch it drift. The artist’s Floating Earth project is a 10-meter installation made from detailed NASA imagery and designed to evoke the Overview Effect. This photo is from Canary Wharf’s Winter Lights 2023, when it floated in Middle Dock among reflections and city lights.

💡 Nerd Fact: Frank White first described the “Overview Effect” in 1987: the shift in perspective associated with seeing Earth from space. Jerram’s Floating Earth also travels with a surround-sound composition by Dan Jones, so the installation is designed to be heard as well as seen.

More: Floating Earth by Luke Jerram in London, UK

🔗 Visit Luke Jerram’s website

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🛞 “Kaikki on mahdollista” (“Everything Is Possible”) — By Villu Jaanisoo, formerly in Helsinki, Finland 🇫🇮

Villu Jaanisoo turned used car tires into a five-meter gorilla seated in a lotus pose. The artist’s CV lists Everything Is Possible as a 2009 public sculpture in Viikki, Helsinki, while the University of Helsinki describes tire pieces fixed over a steel frame. It stood on the Viikki campus until an arson attack destroyed it in 2018.

💡 Nerd Fact: Jaanisoo has said that environmental concerns matter, but he is even more interested in the traces left by the former lives of used objects and in placing familiar materials in a new context. Every tire on the gorilla had already traveled somewhere before becoming part of its skin.

More: Tire zen master gorilla in Helsinki, Finland

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🪨 Floating Stone Illusion — By Sha’ban Abbas at Cairo International Airport, Egypt 🇪🇬

This optical illusion is not an ancient relic or a real floating rock. AFP Fact Check traced the photo to a 2008 sculpture by Egyptian artist Sha’ban Abbas at Terminal 3 of Cairo International Airport. Two stone-like forms and a taut rope create a simple question: where is the weight being held?

💡 Nerd Fact: The image was widely shared with false claims that the stones had been tied 1,400 years ago. AFP documented the real origin and noted that Abbas died in 2010 at age 41. The sculpture’s online afterlife became almost as unusual as the work itself.

More: Sculptures With Unique Creativity

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🛸 Darth Vader Monument — By Alexander Milov in Odesa, Ukraine 🇺🇦

At the former Pressmash plant in Odesa, artist Alexander Milov transformed a Soviet-era Lenin statue into Darth Vader in 2015 as Ukraine’s decommunization laws took effect. TIME reported that much of the original figure remained: Lenin’s head was covered by Vader’s helmet, the coat became a cape, and the finished monument also worked as a Wi-Fi hotspot.

💡 Nerd Fact: The choice was tied to a real strand of Ukrainian political satire. Before the makeover, Ukraine’s Internet Party had tried to register a Darth Vader candidate for president, and other Star Wars-themed candidates appeared in local politics. The monument brought pop culture into a very specific debate about what to do with Soviet-era symbols.

More: A monument to Lenin transformed into a statue of Darth Vader in Odesa, Ukraine

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❄️ “Departure” — By George Lundeen in Vancouver, Canada 🇨🇦

Frost gives George Lundeen’s quiet bench scene an extra sense of waiting. The City of Vancouver’s Public Art Registry places this bronze at VanDusen Botanical Garden, where it was installed in 2013. The Museum of Outdoor Arts notes that Lundeen based the work on a sketch of a young couple waiting in an Italian train station.

💡 Nerd Fact: The original sculpture dates to 1984. The Museum of Outdoor Arts describes Lundeen’s practice as translating scenes from everyday life into bronze; here, a suitcase, a bench, and the comfort of another person carry the whole story.

More: Sculptures You (probably) Didn’t Know Existed

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♻️ Plastic Mountain Lion — By Bordalo II in El Paso, Texas, USA 🇺🇸

Bordalo II builds a mountain lion from the waste his work asks viewers to notice. The artist’s Big Trash Animals series turns discarded materials into large animal forms, with the waste deliberately left visible. Texas Highways reported that the 64-foot El Paso piece used community-collected recycled trash on the west wall of One San Jacinto Plaza.

💡 Trash Fact: This was organized from the classroom outward. Texas Highways reported that El Dorado High School art students helped create the Green Hope Project and bring Bordalo II to El Paso. The finished work was his first Texas installation and, at the time, his largest all-plastic piece anywhere.

More: Plastic Mountain Lion by Bordalo II in El Paso, Texas

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🧠 “SENTIENT” — By Daniel Popper at The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois, USA (2021–2023) 🇺🇸

Daniel Popper’s SENTIENT was part of Human + Nature at The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois. The exhibition ran from May 2021 through February 2023, placing large figures throughout the landscape. The Morton Arboretum confirms that the exhibition has concluded, but the image still shows why setting mattered: the fragmented face appears to pause among the trees.

💡 Nerd Fact: Human + Nature was Popper’s largest exhibition at the time. The Morton Arboretum says the sculptures ranged from 15 to 26 feet and were spread across its 1,700 acres, leading visitors into parts of the grounds they might not otherwise have explored.

More: SENTIENT — Return to stillness by Daniel Popper

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Which one is your favorite?