Plastique Fantastique installs fossil-based inflatable sculpture on Korean shoreline.

4 hours ago7 min read2 comments

Along the rugged shoreline of Busan, South Korea, a strange new organism appears to have washed ashore—a luminous, breathing form that seems both alien and ancient. This is 'Polymeter,' the latest inflatable sculpture by the visionary art collective Plastique Fantastique, and it represents a profound conversation starter about material legacy in our Anthropocene age.Crafted not from conventional plastics but from innovative fossil-based polymers, the work literally embodies the very ancient life it conceptually grapples with, creating a poetic tension between its industrial origins and its dialogue with natural decay. As the tide ebbs and flows around its translucent skin, the sculpture breathes with a slow, pneumatic rhythm, a ghostly echo of the primordial seas from which its component materials were first born millions of years ago.For the collective, this isn't just public art; it's a tangible interface, a soft machine that invites viewers to physically interact with the deep time of carbon, to touch the paradox of creating ephemeral, playful forms from substances that persist in our environment for eons. The choice of a Korean coastal city is particularly resonant, a nation that has catapulted itself into a high-tech future while remaining deeply connected to its natural landscapes, now facing the universal challenge of rising sea levels and environmental transformation.The work functions like a speculative fossil from the future, asking us what legacy our own material choices will leave behind. Will they be resilient artifacts or agents of decay? It evokes the spirit of other land artists like Christo and Jeanne-Claude, yet replaces their fabric with a high-tech membrane that is itself the subject of the inquiry.The inflatable form, shimmering under the East Asian sun, becomes a collaborative canvas with the elements—wind shapes its contours, light filters through its layers, and salt spray kisses its surface, accelerating a performative degradation that is central to its meaning. In an art world increasingly obsessed with digital NFTs and virtual realms, Plastique Fantastique doubles down on the power of the physical, the communal, and the sensorial, creating a shared experience that a screen could never replicate. It’s a bold, almost rebellious act, using the tools of industry to question industry itself, and in doing so, offering a moment of collective pause—a beautiful, haunting, and deeply human meditation on what we build, what remains, and what we ultimately allow to return to the earth.

#featured

#Plastique Fantastique

#inflatable sculpture

#Polymeter

#Busan

#shoreline

#installation

#fossil-based

#contemporary art

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