The Wrong Size (10 Photos)

September 9, 2026

By Vidar

In these ten scenes, scale has stopped following the rules.

Giant sculptures, tiny figures and painted illusions change the proportions of familiar things. A clothespin grips the ground, while a cigarette butt becomes a museum exhibit.

More: 30 Sculptures You Probably Didn’t Know Existed

📎 “Skin 2” — By Mehmet Ali Uysal, Originally in Parc Hauster, Chaudfontaine, Belgium 🇧🇪

Created in 2010 for Parc Hauster in Chaudfontaine, Skin 2 is listed by Pi Artworks at 700 × 800 centimeters. The giant clothespin grips a mound of lawn, making the ground look soft.

💡 Nerd Fact: Uysal’s gallery describes Skin as a series that treats walls, buildings and ground as an architectural outer layer that can be stretched, compressed or displaced.

More: The Giant Clothespin in a Belgian Park

🔗 Follow Mehmet Ali Uysal on Instagram

🏸 “Shuttlecocks” — By Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen in Kansas City, Missouri, USA 🇺🇸

Installed in 1994 on the lawns of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the four Shuttlecocks are arranged as if the museum itself were the badminton net. The museum records each sculpture at just over 19 feet high and about 16 feet across.

💡 Nerd Fact: The sculptures were not immediately accepted as a civic symbol. The Nelson-Atkins records that their 1994 installation prompted letters and cartoons calling them “not art” and a “giant waste.” The museum now describes them as an icon of both the institution and Kansas City.

More: 8 Public Artworks That Made Everyone Look Up

🔗 See Shuttlecocks at The Nelson-Atkins Museum

🤐 “Zip” — By Mark Richard Hall in Southampton, New York, USA 🇺🇸

A stainless-steel zipper opens a strip of grass and exposes a narrow water feature. Architectural Digest documented Mark Richard Hall’s sculpture embedded in the lawn of a private Southampton home.

More: 10 Sculptures Built Into the Landscape

🔗 Visit Mark Richard Hall’s studio

🪟 “Window with Ladder – Too Late for Help” — By Leandro Erlich in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA 🇺🇸

Created in 2008 and now in the Sydney and Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden, the work reduces a house to a ladder, a window and one apparently floating fragment of brick wall. NOMA’s collection record lists an underground steel structure supporting the fiberglass and aluminum assembly.

💡 Nerd Fact: The work was originally installed in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward for Prospect.1 in 2008. The freestanding ladder and window were read as symbols of the escape residents needed when the levee failed during Hurricane Katrina. NOMA acquired the sculpture the following year.

More: Sculptures Built Into the Landscape

🔗 Follow Leandro Erlich on Instagram

🚬 “Relics” — By Slinkachu in Newcastle, UK 🇬🇧

Created in Newcastle in 2009, Relics places two miniature visitors and a museum-style label beside a found cigarette butt. At their scale, the litter looks like a large archaeological find.

💡 Nerd Fact: Slinkachu says he remodels and paints miniature model-train figures before placing, photographing and leaving them in the street. He began working this way in 2006, partly to make city residents look more closely at their surroundings.

More: Slinkachu’s Miniature Street Scenes (7 Photos)

🔗 Follow Slinkachu on Instagram

🔭 “Stargazer” — By Ivan Sery and Tatyana Konstantinova in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia 🇷🇺

A local interview with both artists gives the title as Звездочет, meaning “Stargazer.” Installed in July 2017 at the intersection of Semashko Street and Bolshaya Pecherskaya Street, the miniature room held an elderly astronomer, telescope, drawings and curtains in a gap in the brickwork. The installation disappeared from the wall on 2 August 2017.

💡 Nerd Fact: Ivan Sery said the miniature was built in two days from plastic, modeling clay and glue. When the temperature reached 25°C (77°F), the astronomer softened and fell. The artists repaired it, but it disappeared two days later.

More: Ivan Sery and Tatyana Konstantinova’s Tiny Room in the Wall

🟢 “Gravity” — By Leon Keer in Wuppertal, Germany 🇩🇪

Painted for Urbaner Kunstraum Wuppertal at Kleeblatt 58, Gravity makes the wall look like a transparent box packed with marbles. On his official project page, Keer says an extra marble was added to the pavement as a final-day surprise, extending the anamorphic image into the street.

💡 Nerd Fact: The organizers say the commission grew out of conversations with residents of Wuppertal’s Südstadt district. They describe each marble as individual, while all contribute to the movement and play of the group.

More: Leon Keer’s “Gravity” From More Angles (7 Photos)

🔗 Follow Leon Keer on Instagram

✏️ “Photo Opportunity” — By WOSKerski on Penge High Street, London, UK 🇬🇧

WOSKerski calls the work Photo Opportunity and says it was painted in Penge with support from London Calling Blog. The organizers’ 2023 documentation places the giant-pencil landscape on Penge High Street, where visitors can step into the grayscale scene.

💡 Nerd Fact: SprayExhibition20 began in 2016 and had brought more than 400 artworks to the SE20 area by 2021. A project book documented work by 110 artists from its first five years.

More: 9 WOSKerski Murals Across the UK

🔗 Follow WOSKerski on Instagram

🖐️ “Hiperion” — By Sam3 in El Castillejo de Murcia, Spain 🇪🇸

Sam3’s archive identifies this mural as Hiperion and places it in El Castillejo de Murcia. The giant black silhouette bends over the building and swings a tiny painted girl from one finger. Parked cars and passers-by below give a sense of its size.

💡 Nerd Fact: Sam3’s original 2006 note places Hiperion within his 12 Shadows project and states that the building was due to be demolished within months.

More: Street Art by Sam3

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🔍 “Big Boy Observing the World” — By KAY2 (Koo Hunjoo) in Busan, South Korea 🇰🇷

A Korean art column identifies the 2012 mural as 세상을 관찰하는 빅보이, translated here as Big Boy Observing the World, and names the artist as Busan-born Koo Hunjoo, known as KAY2. Painted near Gwangnam Elementary School in Gwangalli, the giant child looks through a magnifying glass at the pedestrians below.

💡 Nerd Fact: KAY2 began making graffiti while at university, using Busan’s Oncheoncheon graffiti zone as an informal base. The zone once extended for about two kilometers beneath metro viaducts, but redevelopment after 2010 reduced the designated graffiti area to roughly 30 meters.

More: Boy with a Magnifying Glass

🔗 Follow KAY2 on Instagram