Seamlessly connecting realistic facial features with organic architecture, these sculptural works bridge reality and fantasy, natural forms and built scenes blurring scales and dimensions.

Artist Yuanxing Liang, a graduate of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts,deftly connects heads and landscapes — the latter populated with ponds, trees and bridges — in wraparound works.

One of these, Peach Blossom Island (above), was created for the Wonder Festival in Shanghai. It was inspired by the fable of Peach Blossom Dragon Spring, a phantom-dreaming world equally surreal in legend as in the sculpture.

Many of the elements in these works transition with remarkable clarity from human to architectural forms, with windswept hair morphing into tree branches or vegetation-covered hillsides, or crumbling faces breaking into rocky facades. The effect brings the viewer inside the mind of the figure, making it easy to imagine they are lost in thought in the landscapes spilling out all around them.

Enormous creatures crouch in a historic building in Sheffield, England, as street artist Phlegm brings the signature style he developed through years of illustrating black and white comics into three dimensions. “Mausoleum of the Giants” is a large-scale sculptural installation featuring many of the same characters Phlegm has brought to life in other mediums, including murals all over the world.

Last time we checked in with Phlegm (way back in 2011) the artist said he was feeling a bit disillusioned after getting “sucked into the art machine” and decided to only produce art that was made by his own hands, with no shows planned in the foreseeable future. Eight years later, after adorning countless building facades with fantastical creatures and scenes, he’s clearly ready for bigger and better things. Last year, he said he was feeling energized, noting “I’ve unlocked something and feel more driven than I think I ever have.” It looks like this show is part of that burst of energy and inspiration.

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Set within Eyewitness Works, a restored 19th century brick building that once housed craftsmen producing pocket knives and other cutlery, “Mausoleum of the Giants” almost feels like an invitation into the artist’s mind, allowing visitors to roam around and view colossal sculptures from all angles. It’s always exciting to see artists experiment with translating their individual style to a new medium, and this exhibition doesn’t disappoint.

“Sheffield as the stage for this epic showcase was no accident. With local industrial buildings often forming the backdrop for his murals in the city, an old factory complex is the perfect location for presenting such a poetic and personal undertaking and bringing Phlegm’s iconic characters to life. Imagined as beings whose life spans over thousands of years, these peaceful beasts have seen rivers erode and mountains change. With their final days coming slowly but surely, the giants are ready for their eternal rest, giving everyone enough time to meet them, mourn them and make peace with their ending.”

The show is free and will be up through April 6th, 2019. If you can’t make it there in person, check out the #phlegmgiants tag on Instagram.

‘Sculpture by the Sea’ returns to Sydney‘s beautiful Bondi Beach, featuring awesome open-air art exhibits by over 130 artists from 21 countries.

Now celebrating its 22nd year on the brilliant white sands of Bondi Beach, “Sculpture by the Sea” still has the power to bemuse, bewilder and beguile beach-goers Down Under.

It’s not just that some of the exhibits are larger than life. Pieces like “Cool Shit” (above) by notorious and provocative modern artist Damian Hirst are guaranteed to trigger a wide range of emotions that may differ between individuals – even between different viewings.

Art of the Surreal

Sculpture by the Sea began as a volunteer initiative in 1997 and over the years has grown to a three-week event drawing large and appreciative crowds to beautiful Bondi Beach. Remaining true to its roots, Sculpture by the Sea is a not-for-profit organization though it does receive just under 20% of its revenue via government funding.

That’s Just How He Rolls

The event’s popularity has surged over its 22-year run and not only visitors are impressed – artists from beyond Australia have taken notice. This year, the roughly 70 participating Australian sculptors have been joined by eight Chinese artists from Beijing’s prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts. One of the Chinese contingent’s more er, notorious exhibits is “Bank” (above), by Mu Boyan. Does this beach backdrop make me look fat?

Wheel Be Seeing You

Flickr member Ian Sanderson (iansand) visited Sydney in October of 2018 and came back with a wealth of brilliant photos, and probably a lousy t-shirt to boot. Sanderson’s images of Sculpture by the Sea, posted under an international Creative Commons license, benefit from the famously clear and sunny weather of a typical New South Wales spring. Weather of not, though, artist Cao Hui’s sculpture titled “A Bicycle Covered by Snow” was designed to be cool no matter how hot it got.

Oh Say Cairn You See

Italian-Australian artist Alessandra Rossi created “Cairn” as an homage to ancient megalithic sites found worldwide which evoke a certain common humanity displayed by our species dating back to prehistoric times. “The abstraction and simplification of form contains the light and colors of the landscape in which it is placed,” explains Rossi, “exposing the hidden and the imaginary, in a balancing act between fragility and impermanence.”

Layers Not Lawyers

The 2018 edition of Sculpture by the Sea ends today (November 4th) so consider yourself lucky if you’ve been able to enjoy the many sculptures spread along over a mile of Bondi Beach’s exquisite white sand coastline. Besides the artworks themselves, the event featured guided tours, free artist talks, an indoor sculpture exhibition in case of inclement weather, and last but not least a “sculpture conference” at the Sydney Opera House. The somewhat disturbingly organic sculpture above, by the way, is “Layers” by artist Charlie Trivers.

Making Great Strides

Artists who participate in Sculpture by the Sea do so for a variety of reasons, one being the Aqualand Sculpture Award presented to the “winner” near the end of the event. As art’s appeal varies depending on the beholder, who can really state which artwork is best? Nevertheless, every year one artist walks off with a cash prize of A$70,000 (just over $50,000) while their sculpture is gifted to the Harbour Trust and displayed permanently at George Head in Headland Park. Wei Wang’s “Walking” (above) won’t step up to claim the prize but the artist (and his sculpture) can still stand tall regardless.

Standing nearly 40 feet tall, this giant arcing whale is composed entirely of plastic waste gathered from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, carefully assembled in a canal of Bruges, Belgium.

Following a Liquid City theme, Brooklyn designers from STUDIOKCA chose the form to help observes visualize the magnitude and shape of both what winds up clogging the world’s oceans and the creatures impacted.

The net effect is striking, the arched water mammal rising up from the deep in a graceful curve, which, upon closer inspection, is made up of white and blue refuse, stamped with languages and brands from around the world.

Dubbed Skyscraper, the sculpture brings together 4,000 square feet of discarded plastic gathered in Hawaii beach cleanups, a small fraction of the 150 million tons currently lost at sea.

And while the majestic sea creature ricing from the canal might seem large, “pound for pound that is more plastic waste swimming in the ocean than there is whales,” say the creators. “So an opportunity like this to show the type of plastic and the amount of plastic that ends up in our oceans is really important.”

Looking at one of his sculptures from a single perspective, it would be easy to mistake them for 2D drawings on a flat surface. After all, architects have a tendency to layer lines as they solve design problems in realtime, resulting in a sketchy quality in their “working” drawings. They often also sketch buildings with overlapping lines, leaving structural intersections seeming fluid and unfinished.

Spanish artist David Moreno sculpts along similar lines, using thin strands to model out architectural creations that appear almost like two-dimensional art on a page.

Strung together with slim piano wire, he builds up his pieces from steel rods that form outlines of buildings as well as architectural details.

There is rarely a clear starting point, and one could imagine any of these constructions being half-finished or, conversely, well past their natural end point.

In the end, there is a kind of gestural quality and uncertainty to each piece, something that architect’s often intentionally cultivate — by creating overlaps and ambiguities, they can allow observers (and clients) to read their own vision into it.

Moreno has created and iterated on these kinds of three-dimensional sketch sculptures for a long time, but has also worked on large-scale installations and furniture-based works. You can see more, too, on his Behance page.