Art Hidden Inside Empty Places (8 Photos)

July 23, 2026

By Vidar

A blank wall would not tell the same story.

RONE built a glasshouse around one of his portraits inside a long-unused wing of Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station. At Detroit’s Packard Plant, a stencilled child stood beside the words “I remember when all this was trees.” Elsewhere, broken walls, empty rooms and old windows complete the image.

🌿 “The Glasshouse” from TIME — By RONE in Melbourne, Australia 🇦🇺

RONE created TIME throughout the long-abandoned third-floor wing of Flinders Street Station. RONE’s own 2022 post identifies this purpose-built installation as The Glasshouse. Behind its panes, a quiet portrait and climbing plants make the room feel preserved and overtaken at the same time.

💡 Site Fact: The station’s third floor once contained an amateur radio station and adult-education classes. During the 1970s it also housed a sauna, and the roof once had a running track.

More: The Clock Room and The Glasshouse by RONE

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🌳 “I Remember When All This Was Trees” — Attributed to Banksy in Detroit, USA 🇺🇸

A stencilled child with a paint bucket stands beside one red sentence in the ruins of the Packard Automotive Plant. A photograph of the mural appeared on Banksy’s website in 2010, after which the work was widely reported as his. Two Detroit men later claimed they had made it, but acknowledged that they had no proof. 555 Gallery removed the cinder-block section from the site to preserve it.

💡 Wall Fact: The salvaged section stood about eight feet tall, weighed roughly 1,500 pounds and later sold for $137,500.

More: Banksy Street Art Collection (100 Photos)

🔗 Visit Banksy’s official website

🔥 “Enjoy Coca-Cola” — By Icy and Sot in New York City, USA 🇺🇸

Documented in January 2014, Enjoy Coca-Cola shows a stencilled man carrying a red Coca-Cola crate as flames rise from the bottles like Molotov cocktails. StreetArtNews reported that Icy and Sot used fire for the installation inside an abandoned New York house.

💡 Artist Fact: Icy and Sot are brothers Saman and Sasan Oskouei from Tabriz, Iran. Urban Nation records that they began as stencil artists in 2006, before expanding into interventions, installations and video.

More: Enjoy Coca-Cola in New York

🔗 Visit Oskouei Studio

🦁 “Beware of Love” — By SCAF in an Abandoned Building

In his September 2020 post, SCAF called this anamorphic lion Beware of Love. Painted across the wall and floor of an abandoned interior, its paws align with the room while the mane crosses the corner, making the animal appear to step into the corridor.

💡 Documentation Fact: In a 2020 interview, SCAF estimated that only about one percent of his paintings were still standing. He said this impermanence was one reason he staged and photographed himself beside the finished works.

More: Lion in an Abandoned Building · 26 Amazing 3D Paintings by SCAF

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🌬️ Portrait in a Roofless Ruin — By Dennis Fauter in Lagos, Portugal 🇵🇹

Fauter’s official mural portfolio includes this exact photograph, while an October 2023 Street Art Pedia post places the work in Lagos. The roofless ruin becomes part of the portrait: the profile rises from the broken wall toward the open sky, and the handwritten “please stand here!” mark on the ground indicates the intended viewpoint.

💡 Artist Fact: Fauter’s official biography says he entered graffiti in 2011. He now makes large murals with spray paint, rollers and brushes.

More: Street Art by Dennis Fauter in Lagos

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🃏 “I Bet Only on One Card” — By JW17 in Prague, Czechia 🇨🇿

A woman stands alone with the ace of spades raised in one hand. JW17 keeps both the figure and the ruined room almost monochrome, allowing the bright window openings and the single card to carry the composition.

💡 Card Fact: The ornate ace of spades in Anglo-American decks is partly a relic of English playing-card taxes. From about 1718 it was the card stamped to show that duty had been paid; from 1765 the Stamp Office printed the ace itself, and forging one was a capital offence.

More: Three Views of I Bet Only on One Card

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🪟 “The Balcony” — By Oakoak

Oakoak includes this intervention in his official archive and calls it The Balcony. It places the figures from Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s Two Women at a Window inside a street-facing window opening. The existing sill and iron railing complete the illusion.

💡 Art History Fact: The National Gallery of Art notes that covering a smile or laugh was considered good etiquette among the Spanish aristocracy. The two figures may be a young woman and her chaperone, but their identities remain unknown.

More: Wrong but Right: Art by Oakoak

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💀 “Skull 2022” — By DavidL outside Barcelona, Spain 🇪🇸

DavidL lets the building decide the anatomy. The doorway becomes the mouth, the circular opening becomes a hollow eye, and the chimney stretches the skull upward through the trees.

💡 Artist Fact: When photographer Fer Alcalá documented DavidL’s practice in 2018, the artist had already been making graffiti for 25 years and was concentrating most of his work in a secret abandoned location. One piece observed during the visit took seven hours to complete in a single room.

More: Skull 2022 Outside Barcelona · 14 Artworks by DavidL

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📷 Photo by jack_graffiti_places.