25 Extraordinary Sculptures

None of these are digital.

A whale breaches from a canal. A giant pigeon watches Manhattan. A real locomotive points into the sky. Every work below was physically built and installed in a public place.

We checked the archives of Street Art Utopia and World Art Utopia. Here are 25 public sculptures we had somehow missed.

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🫨 “Feltépve (Ripped Up)” — By Ervin Hervé-Lóránth in Budapest, Hungary, 2014 🇭🇺

A colossal man pushes his head and hands through the lawn at Széchenyi István Square, lifting a slab of turf.

💡 Nerd Fact: Hervé-Lóránth’s own archive gives the English title as Ripped Up. He and Gallery Out of Home created the temporary polystyrene installation for Art Market Budapest.

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🐋 “Skyscraper (the Bruges Whale)” — By StudioKCA in Bruges, Belgium, 2018 🇧🇪

An 11-metre whale rises from the Spiegelrei canal beside Jan van Eyckplein, its skin assembled from blue and white plastic waste.

💡 Nerd Fact: The installation was made from five tonnes of plastic waste for the 2018 Bruges Triennial. StudioKCA worked with volunteers from the Hawaii Wildlife Fund and Surfrider Foundation to collect the waste from Hawaiian beaches.

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🔮 “ORB” — By SpY in Giza, Egypt, 2022 🇪🇬

A fragmented mirrored sphere reflects the desert on the Giza Plateau, with the three pyramids behind it.

💡 Nerd Fact: SpY says the sphere’s geometry refers to the ratio between a pyramid’s perimeter and twice its height. He also links its circular, mirrored form to Egyptian associations with the sun, creation and rebirth.

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🐦 “Dinosaur” — By Iván Argote in New York City, USA, 2024 🇺🇸

A gigantic pigeon stood on the High Line Plinth above Manhattan, as if the city had finally built a monument to its most persistent resident.

💡 Nerd Fact: Argote says the title refers both to the pigeon’s dinosaur ancestors and to extinction, imagining pigeons persisting in the gaps of future worlds after humans are gone. The cast-aluminium work was on view from October 2024 through April 6, 2026.

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🤫 “Water’s Soul” — By Jaume Plensa in Jersey City, USA, 2020 🇺🇸

At Ellipse Pier in Newport, an immense head faces Lower Manhattan across the Hudson with one finger held to its lips.

💡 Nerd Fact: Although dated 2020, Water’s Soul opened to the public on October 21, 2021. Standing 80 feet—about 24 metres—tall, it faces the Hudson River and Lower Manhattan skyline.

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🐻 “I See What You Mean” — By Lawrence Argent in Denver, USA, 2005 🇺🇸

A bright blue bear leans toward the glass of the Colorado Convention Center and peers inside.

💡 Nerd Fact: The sculpture is 40 feet tall and is built from more than 4,000 fibreglass triangles fitted over a steel frame. Its official title is I See What You Mean, though most people call it the Big Blue Bear.

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🐴 “The Kelpies” — By Andy Scott in Falkirk, Scotland, UK, 2013 🇬🇧

Two vast steel horse heads rise beside the Forth & Clyde Canal at The Helix. As visitors move around them, their surfaces shift between solid plates and open latticework.

💡 Nerd Fact: Each 30-metre head combines stainless steel with painted mild steel and honours the Clydesdale draught horses that worked Scotland’s canals and land. Scott modelled their individual characters on two local Clydesdales named Duke and Baron.

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😂 “A-maze-ing Laughter” — By Yue Minjun in Vancouver, Canada, 2009 🇨🇦

Fourteen larger-than-life bronze figures laugh, point and bend around Morton Park at English Bay.

💡 Nerd Fact: The installation has 14 patinated cast-bronze figures, each 259 centimetres tall. The figures repeat Yue’s signature laughing image. The work was installed for the 2009–2011 Vancouver Biennale, donated to the city in 2012 and remains in place.

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🐙 “The Arms of Friendship” — By Gillie and Marc in Boston, USA, installed 2025 🇺🇸

A 36-foot bronze octopus stretches across Dry Dock 2 in Boston’s Charlestown Navy Yard, cradling endangered animals in its eight arms.

💡 Nerd Fact: The seven-tonne cast-bronze sculpture debuted outside New York’s World Trade Center in July 2024. It was installed in Boston in August 2025 and is scheduled to remain there through July 2027.

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🐘 “Le Grand Éléphant” — Conceived by François Delarozière and Pierre Orefice, and built by La Machine in Nantes, France, 2007 🇫🇷

This 12-metre mechanical elephant walks, trumpets and carries up to 50 passengers through the former Nantes shipyards.

💡 Nerd Fact: Delarozière and Orefice developed the idea together, and Delarozière made the initial drawings. La Machine’s builders turned the designs into working mechanisms. The 21-metre-long machine weighs 48.4 tonnes and combines a steel frame with tulip-poplar and lime wood. Sixty-two cylinders animate it, while a hybrid electric drive moves it at 1–3 km/h.

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🏊 “Die Badende (The Bather)” — Designed by Oliver Voss in Hamburg, Germany, 2011 🇩🇪

A woman’s enormous head and knees broke the surface of Hamburg’s Inner Alster near Ballindamm and Lombardsbrücke, making the central lake look like a private bathtub.

💡 Nerd Fact: Voss’s project documentation records the three-part installation as 20.45 metres long, 3.96 metres high and two tonnes; it was on view from August 2 to 10, 2011. Peter Ardelt’s workshop fabricated it from Voss’s design using polystyrene, steel, fibreglass and special pontoons.

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💞 “Man & Woman” (also known as “Ali & Nino”) — By Tamara Kvesitadze with Paata Sanaia in Batumi, Georgia, 2010 🇬🇪

Two eight-metre steel figures on Batumi Boulevard beside the Black Sea glide toward one another, merge for a moment and then pass completely through each other.

💡 Nerd Fact: Kvesitadze lists the work as Man & Woman (aka. Ali & Nino). The Batumi installation was created with Paata Sanaia in 2010, and its steel figures repeat their movement over roughly ten minutes.

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🏙️ “Lilith” — By David Černý in Prague, Czech Republic, 2022 🇨🇿

A 24-metre-tall steel figure leans against the Fragment apartment building in Prague’s Karlín district, as if its fragmented façade were resting on her shoulder.

💡 Nerd Fact: The 35-tonne figure is made from polished chrome-nickel steel and was installed on October 1–2, 2022. Its head turns through 180 degrees after midnight.

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✋ “The Awakening” — By J. Seward Johnson Jr., created in 1980 and installed at National Harbor, Maryland, USA, in 2008 🇺🇸

A 72-foot giant appears to struggle out of the sand on National Harbor’s Potomac waterfront: a hand, an upstretched arm, a bent knee, a foot and a screaming face break the surface.

💡 Nerd Fact: The Seward Johnson Atelier dates The Awakening to 1980. The five-part cast-aluminium sculpture stood at Hains Point in Washington, D.C., before moving in February 2008 to a specially built beach at National Harbor.

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🫥 “Wonderland” — By Jaume Plensa in Calgary, Canada, 2012 🇨🇦

A 12-metre head made from an open lattice of painted stainless steel rises outside The Bow in downtown Calgary. The towers and sky remain visible through the lattice.

💡 Nerd Fact: Plensa’s official record dates the 12-metre portrait to 2012. In a 2023 interview, he explained that he gave it two small doors so visitors could walk inside the head and see Calgary’s skyline from within.

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🖐️ “La Mano del Desierto” — By Mario Irarrázabal in the Atacama Desert, Chile, 1992 🇨🇱

An 11-metre concrete hand stands alone beside Chile’s Route 5 in the Atacama Desert, with mountains and open sky behind it.

💡 Nerd Fact: Chile’s official tourism service says the monument was inaugurated on March 28, 1992, around 75 kilometres south of Antofagasta. Corporación Pro Antofagasta describes it as a cultural-heritage landmark and regional symbol.

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🌊 “Ocean Atlas” — By Jason deCaires Taylor in Nassau, The Bahamas, 2014 🇧🇸

A sculpture modelled on a local Bahamian girl kneels beneath the sea off western New Providence, carrying the ocean above her shoulders like the Titan Atlas.

💡 Nerd Fact: At five metres high and more than 60 tonnes, Ocean Atlas is the largest single figurative sculpture ever deployed underwater. Commissioned by the Bahamas Reef Environment Educational Foundation, it was constructed from stainless steel, pH-neutral cement, basalt and aggregates to create an artificial reef.

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👶 “Planet” — By Marc Quinn in Singapore, installed 2013 🇸🇬

A nine-metre-long sleeping baby seems to float above the grass near The Meadow at Gardens by the Bay, even though the sculpture of painted bronze and steel weighs seven tonnes.

💡 Nerd Fact: Modelled on Quinn’s son Lucas, the three-metre-tall sculpture was created in 2008 and balances its entire weight through the baby’s right hand. It was permanently installed in Singapore in 2013.

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👁️ “Le Cyclop” — By Jean Tinguely with Niki de Saint Phalle and collaborators in Milly-la-Forêt, France, 1969–1994 🇫🇷

A colossal mirrored head stands among the trees outside Milly-la-Forêt, with four levels of sound sculptures, an automatic theatre, scrap-metal machinery, stairways and works by collaborating artists.

💡 Nerd Fact: Work began in 1969. After Tinguely died in 1991, de Saint Phalle financed its completion, and the 22.5-metre, 350-tonne steel construction opened to the public in May 1994.

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💃 “Bliss Dance” — By Marco Cochrane in Las Vegas, USA, installed 2016 🇺🇸

A 40-foot dancing woman rises above The Park beside T-Mobile Arena, her stainless-steel mesh body glowing with coloured light after dark.

💡 Nerd Fact: The refurbished sculpture weighs more than 7,500 pounds and contains 3,000 coloured LEDs. It debuted at Burning Man in 2010, stood on San Francisco’s Treasure Island from 2011 to 2015 and has been permanently installed in Las Vegas since 2016.

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🚂 “Pociąg do nieba (Train to Heaven)” — By Andrzej Jarodzki in Wrocław, Poland, 2010 🇵🇱

At Plac Strzegomski, a real 1944 Ty2-1035 steam locomotive climbs steeply into the air on a short section of track.

💡 Nerd Fact: According to the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, Jarodzki waited 16 years to see the sculpture inaugurated on October 19, 2010. The 21-metre installation weighs 82 tonnes and combines a 1944 Ty2-1035 steam locomotive with a section of track laid on 32 metal sleepers.

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🐘 “The World Turns” — By Michael Parekōwhai in Brisbane, Australia, 2011–12 🇦🇺

On GOMA’s Bistro Lawn, a nearly five-metre bronze elephant balances upside down beside a small kuril, a native water rat.

💡 Nerd Fact: The kuril is connected to the mangroves of Kurilpa Point. In Parekōwhai’s work, the kuril is the hero. The upturned elephant represents the world it has shifted off its axis.

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⛪ “Device to Root Out Evil” — By Dennis Oppenheim in Calgary, Canada; second version created in 2004 and installed in 2019 🇨🇦

This photograph shows the sculpture before the 2025 fire: the inverted New England-style church appears to balance on its steeple at 5th Street Square.

💡 Nerd Fact: Oppenheim created the original Device to Root Out Evil in 1997; it belongs to the Denver Art Museum. The second version shown here dates to 2004 and was relocated to Calgary’s 5th Street Square in 2019. It was found fire-damaged on October 29, 2025; CMLC then engaged Art to Public to assess the damage and assist with restoration.

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🗿 “Eros Bendato” — By Igor Mitoraj in Kraków, Poland; cast in 1999 and gifted to the city in 2005 🇵🇱

A bandaged bronze head lies on its side beside the Town Hall Tower in Kraków’s Main Market Square, large enough for visitors to step inside its hollow interior.

💡 Nerd Fact: Mitoraj donated the bronze to Kraków in 2005. The city considered six permanent sites, while the artist favoured the Main Market Square, where it had already appeared during his 2003–04 exhibition.

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🎢 “SpaceWalk” — By Heike Mutter and Ulrich Genth in Pohang, South Korea, 2021 🇰🇷

This roller-coaster-like public walkway sends visitors up and around a web of steel paths above Hwanho Park.

💡 Nerd Fact: Mutter and Genth’s sculpture has approximately 333 metres of track, but its central loop cannot be walked and is meant purely to be seen.

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Which one is your favorite?