A giant metallic head splits into segments and rotates in a ‘metamorphosis’ worthy of its subject, author Franz Kafka. All 42 of its layers spin independently, catching the sunlight on their reflective stainless steel edges, magnifying the strange transformation as the head briefly blurs into something more abstract and then comes together again. The 45-ton sculpture was installed in a Prague plaza in 2014, visualizing the inner workings of a psyche the sculptor may identify with, himself. It’s perhaps the tamest and least controversial piece Czech artist David Cerný has ever put out for public consumption.

Entitled ‘K’, the sculpture has a nearly-identical twin called METALMORPHOSIS in Technology Plaza in Charlotte, North Carolina, which even had its own live webcam feed for a while so anyone in the world could watch passersby interact with it at any given moment. The Charlotte version is not based on Kafka, and sits in the center of a fountain, occasionally spitting water. Its mirrored exterior almost makes it seem like an optical illusion in certain lights, like some kind of apparition made of the sky itself.

Born in Prague, David ?erný first gained notoriety in 1991 when he took it upon himself to paint a Soviet tank serving as a war memorial in his home city bright pink. A number of his statues feature grown men peeing, and the literally masturbatory ‘Nation for Itself Forever’ had to be perched on the roof of the National Theater to keep it from being defaced.

Crawling babies with bizarrely punched-in faces scale the Czech Republic’s highest tower and wander blindly around parks, while the nation’s most revered saint, St. Wenceslas, is depicted riding a dead horse. A permanent exhibition at FUTURA gallery Prague features ladders leading up to two white posteriors; climb up and stick your head inside to view a video of two Czech politicians spoon-feeding each other to ‘We Are the Champions.” Czech out a tour of the irreverent sculptor’s works in Prague if you’re ever in the city to see them all.

A lone artist is on a mission to restore some of the 70,000 books from the College of Fine Arts at the University of Baghdad that were reduced to ash during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As chaos mounted, looters broke in set the library on fire, burning it to the ground.

Students at the school still lack replacements over a decade later, which led Wafaa Bilal (an Iraqi-born artist living in New York City) to propose Blank Books, a program designed to bring in book donations, in turn to be shipped in sets to the Iraqi capital.

This combination art, awareness and shelf-stocking project works essentially like this: blank books are created and put on shelves at the Art Gallery of Windsor. When someone donates a book, a white blank is removed and given to the donor as a symbol of the void they helped fill.

While the university shared a wishlist, they also welcome books from personal collections in any of the following categories: Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Radio, TV, Film, Music, Art Education, Industrial Design, Printing, Textiles, Calligraphy, Ornamentation.

The effort raised over $50,000 from a crowdfunding campaign, more than 5 times its target amount. The campaign worked like the installation: “The blank books will transform into colored books. I see this as a visualization of the reversal of destruction,” explains Bilal

As the shelves fill up with real books, Kickstarter backers and other donors receive the blank books as rewards as a “small reminder of their contribution.” You can read a more detailed interview with the artist on Hyperallergic or watch him speak on CNN.

More historical context on this effort from its creator: “During the Islamic Golden Age, Baghdad was home to the largest library in the world—the Bayt al-Hikma, or House of Wisdom. A Mongol siege in the 13th century laid waste to all the libraries of Baghdad, along with the House of Wisdom.”

“According to legend, the library was thrown into the Tigris River to create a bridge of books for the Mongolian army to cross. The pages bled ink into the river for seven days, after which the books were drained of knowledge.”

Whether at a gallery without wall plaques, visiting a business establishment or hanging out at a friend’s home, having Magnus on your smartphone will let you see what the wall art around you is all about.

Pointing your device and clicking a picture brings up all kinds of details about a given work, including the name of the artist, medium of the work and its dimensions … as well as its price (either current, if available, or most recent if sold and off the market).

One of its more fascinating features, however, is  its comparative software that brings up what the app considers to be related works of art, by type, style and price. It does this by tapping into a crowd-sourced database of 8,000,000 works of art (and growing).

One risk here, of course, it that it reinforces the commodification of art. It is also sort of a strange function in that it boils art down to tastes and preferences … just because another piece looks similar or is priced in the same range does not mean a user should go out and buy it.

Magnus was 31-year-old German art entrepreneur Magnus Resch, known for his work on best Larry’s List, an active database of contemporary art collectors. His response to this kind of criticism: “Why is it ethically wrong to show users prices of an artwork they are interested in?

“If you are willing to spend $10,000 on an artwork,” he continues, “you should know that another gallery put the work on auction a year ago for $7,000 and it didn’t sell. Knowing this will allow the collector to make a more conscious decision.” Of course, for most of us, spending $10,000 on a piece of art is a bit unrealistic, so perhaps the general public is not really the target audience for the app.

Bringing a certain subtly and sense of humor back to three-dimensional chalk art, David Zenn creates highly-contextual scenes using an array of animal characters, all interacting with urban environments.

For decades, he has used chalk and charcoal to feature pieces that tie into their surroundings, relating to anything from fallen flowers to cracks in the sidewalk.

Rats, bears, lizards, dogs and other less-identifiable animalian hybrids can be found lounging around, floating balloons or hiding in imagined holes, like refugees from a wild children’s book.

Over time, a cast of regular characters has evolved, appearing in different places, telling a story through each sequential work of art. Some of his archival prints are for sale, as well as his book Temporary Preserves (via Colossal).

A recently-completed, six-month art installation in the Tate Modern imported soil from parks all around London, arraying them in the museum’s Turbine hall to show what weeds, grasses and ferns would grow from seeds and spores already present in the dirt.

Empty Lot by artist Abraham Cruzvillegas involved equalizing conditions for the various samples of topsoil, which were evenly lit by lamps and consistently watered for half a year.

The installation was set up as a large geometric sculpture placed on scaffolding, supporting an array of triangular planters.  The samples were brought together from six parks, and kept separate between beds, growing in parallel.

The outcome was unknown in advance, just like growth in nature or the evolution of a city, with elements of chance revealing the hidden potential in different park spaces (images by Sara~, Jennifer Morrow and Alexander Baxevanis)