Michelangelo’s David may always represent a pinnacle of artistic achievement in figurative sculpture, but modern artists are adding some brilliant 21st-century elements to the mix in the form of glitches, kinetic parts, innovative methods and materials, and context from the digital era.

Hollow Humans by Park Ki Pyung

They appear to be impossibly thin veneers of stone, but these eerie sculptures by South Korean artist Park Ki Kyung are actually resin on a steel frame. The figures appear incomplete or fractured “to describe condition of emptiness,” says the artist. “I also use shape of human body with excluded front face, so that I can delete unique characteristics of each person. I describe images of ancient battle scene to show violence against self.”

Anatomical Sculptures by Claude-Olivier Guay

Each of these paneled human heads dramatically opens to reveal a matrix of wires inside, hand-bent by artist Claude-Olivier Guay with no more than a piece of pliers. In one remarkable case, a human torso shows us its skeletal framework, but what’s inside isn’t what it seems: the wire bends itself into an animal shape and gets down on all fours before transforming back into human form.

Wood Sculptures by Willy Verginer

A child clutches a leaking gas can, families swim in tainted water and men pray over barrels of oil in this series by Italian sculptor Willy Verginer highlighting environmental degradation. The sculptures are made of wood and minimally painted for a graphic appearance.

Dissolving Children by Lene Kilde

Limbs are often all that remain of children that have otherwise disappeared in the minimalist wire mesh sculptures of Norwegian artist Lene Kilde. Though the works may appear haunting and even mournful, the artist intends for the blank spaces to be filled in by the viewer’s mind, perhaps with their own images or memories.

Pixelated Wood by Hsu Tung Han

Bodies in motion seem to be dissolving into pixels before our eyes, embodying a clash between the digital and the analog. Artist Hsu Tung Han crafts walnut, teak or African wax wood into human figures interspersed wit blocks. In this case, the glitch effect feels less about corrupted data and more about existential and spiritual matters, as if the figures aren’t entirely tethered to the physical plane.

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21st Century Figurative Sculpture 33 Modern Renderings Of The Human Form

The drive along Spain’s highways just got a lot more colorful for thousands of motorists lucky enough to glimpse one of ten semi-trucks decorated with murals by artists like Javier Arce, Okuda San Miguel, Daniel Muñoz and Marina Vargas. A total of 100 artworks are planned for the ‘Truck Art Project,’ a cultural program bringing vivid street art stylings to public places where they normally wouldn’t be seen. Entrepreneur and art collector Jaime olga, who owns the distribution company Palibex, organized the project in collaboration with Iam Gallery Madrid.

The coolest thing about this project is that the beauty isn’t just on the outside. While it would be great to see freight vehicles offer up their boring, unbranded flanks to artists all over the world as they go about their routes (somebody get on that!), this project takes the concept a step further by offering exhibitions inside, becoming mobile galleries bringing art to small towns and rural areas. That means it’s not just big city dwellers who get to experience it – exposure that could inspire a future generation of artists.

“The initiative thus becomes a living showcase of the latest trends in painting, drawing and street art in our country (although the ambitious program intends to show further multidisciplinary involving other techniques such as photography, music or film,) away from the white cube and destined to a receiver that is not the usual contemporary art in contexts that are also favorable.”

Lots more pictures, and information about each individual artist, can be found at the Truck Art Project website.

Works from 27 iconic modern artists are translated into architecture to make up one of the most colorful fictional cities every imagined. You can almost envision ‘Archist‘ coming to life in a real city like Amsterdam or Barcelona, with a collection of structures bringing the aesthetics of Mondrian, Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali and Ray Lichtenstein to their largest-ever scale.

The illustration series by architect and artist Federico Babina produces surprisingly realistic yet, in many cases, instantly recognizable building designs representing each artist’s body of work.

Some of these artists already produce works that are architectural in nature, such as Anish Kapoor’s undulating sculptural installations and the massive crochet playscapes of Ernesto Neto. Others, like the geometric works of Anne Truitt and Frank Stella, easily translate to the three-dimensional, oversized medium of building materials.

But for the artists working in a more figurative style, Babina had to get a little more creative. The Lichtenstein is especially notable, looking almost like an appropriately Picasso-ized jumble of skin, hair, lips, teeth and clothing.

It’s a parent’s nightmare: a stark, modern living space so clean it practically sparkles that, after the intervention of 1,000 children, ends up looks like the world’s largest finger painting. This awesome installation by artist Yayoi Kusama at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia let kids go wild with stickers over a period of two weeks, resulting in brightly colored chaos.

Kusama painted every surface in the room white, down to the smallest accessories, until the room was so bright it was practically blinding. The room was then offered up to kids as a massive canvas for tens of thousands of round colored stickers.

Entitled ‘The Obliteration Room‘, the project will be up as part of Kusama’s exhibit Look Now, See Forever until March 12th. See more jaw-dropping art installations like this at This Is Colossal.

Iconic paintings by artists like Leonardo DaVinci, Sandro Botticelli and Georges Seurat have become an intrinsic part of our cultural landscape, even as we progress far beyond the time periods in which they were completed. And, whether paying tribute or appropriating, making comments on the art itself or what we have become, today’s artists place these works in the modern context using photography, Photoshop, and other technology.

Re-Imagined as Modern Photographs

(images via: booooooom.com, nymag, artchive)

These amazing recreations of classic paintings are the product of a collaborative project by art blog Booooooom.com and Adobe Remake. The series called for participants to submit photographs that capture the essence of a famous work of art or photography. Some stay loyal to the originals, while others give them a more modern update.

Of course, such photographic recreations of paintings are not uncommon. Another recent example is this shot of the cast of NBC’s comedy series The Office, replicating the painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat.

Altered to Reflect Modern Life

(images via: high snobiety, appropriation-art)

Paintings of centuries past often depict idyllic scenes of simpler times, unmarred by pollution, technology and other aspects of modern society. Leave it to Banksy to intentionally cheapen these scenes, infiltrating their beauty and sense of worth with commentary on the state of modern art, and the world in general. Recreated in oils, works like Jack Vettriano’s ‘Singing Butler’, Ed Hopper’s ‘Nighthawks’ and Monet’s ‘Water Lilies’ hung at a gallery in Britain which was also occupied by live rats.

Infiltrated by Star Wars Characters

(images via: worth1000, chrismcveigh)

The impact of Star Wars on pop culture can’t be overstated. Countless works of art in all media, including graffiti, digital art, photography, performance art and even cakes, have been devoted to the series. So it was only a matter of time before Star Wars fans digitally altered famous paintings to include Princess Leia, R2D2, Chewbacca, Yoda and everyone else in the series. Chewy as Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man, Darth Vader taking the place of Napoleon Bonaparte and the infamous bikini immortalized in marble are just a few of the entries that were produced for a number of Star Wars-related Photoshop contests at Worth 1000.

Created with Digital Technology

(images via: intel.com)

jotta: Remastered – A Visibly Smart production from Intel from jotta on Vimeo.

Drawing on Intel technologies including Intel PCs running CAD software, 3D animation and conductive ink, collaborators in Intel’s ‘Remastered Project’ have interpreted works like The Last Supper in entirely unexpected ways. LED lights and electronic ink make the stars of Van Gogh’s The Starry Night come alive, literally sparkling before our eyes; Edvard Munch’s The Scream is evoked with an installation using bricks, TV screens and looping animations. Each project can be seen in photographs and videos at Intel.com.

Re-Created with Vegetables

(images via: the vegetable museum)

The scenes are familiar, from the composition to the colors to the lighting, but there’s something off about these paintings. Get closer, and you’ll realize what it is: in place of painted human figures and landscapes are broccoli, potatoes, squash and other vegetables. Chinese artist Ju Duoqi says she got the idea for ‘The Vegetable Museum’ after making herself an outfit out of peas.

“In the summer of ’06, I bought several kilograms of peas, and sat there quietly for two days peeling them, before stringing them on a wire and turning them into a skirt, a top, a headdress and a magic wand. I used a remote control to take a photo of myself in them, and named it Pea Beauty Pageant. That was my first work of vegetable art.

In the two years that followed, I often dressed up as a housewife, leisurely strolling to the market in a serious search for fun. I would often pace in front of the vegetable stalls, picking things up, thinking and putting them back, trying to figure out which positions made them more interesting. The different types, shapes and colors of the vegetables, with a bit of rearranging, can make for a rich source of imagery. Fresh, withered, rotting, dried, pickled, boiled, fried, they all come out different. I no longer needed a model, as they all became actors and even props.”

Edited in Photoshop

(images via: design milk)

There’s more than a little something missing from these images of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and Munch’s The Scream. Artist Michael Guppy has used Photoshop to remove the central elements, leaving behind the selection border of each image as an animated gif.

The artist explains that a common theme in his work is the social and cultural side of technology. “The web is a perfect example of how technology transforms society, and we’re right amidst it. This is where the main influence for my work stems from, examining how we interact with the web and how it might change.”