The urban space appears as an immense blank canvas that offers a multitude of options to accommodate surprising, ingenious and, above all, large proposals. The visual strength of these pieces is capable of modifying the environment and generating a great attraction, in addition to energising the activity and serving as a way to channel global messages that seek a direct change in the community. In this panorama, the urban sculpture reveals itself as the great winner. The riskiest and voluminous works claim their share of prominence by living with other disciplines that also make their way into the cities. We bring you some of the most curious works conceived for the public space.

Richard Jackson, “Bad Dog”, 2013 (via publicdelivery.org)

Richard Jackson made this temporary sculpture outside the Orange County Museum of Art, in Santa Ana, California, on the occasion of the retrospective that the centre dedicated to him in 2013. The author wanted to open the debate about the role of humour in art, and of course, he got it. "Bad Dog" achieved a significant impact. The work of this artist is very focused on the double meanings, irony and the fight against stereotypes in art. The result is eclectic and challenging to define work that breaks moulds.

Ugo Rondinone, “Seven Magic Mountains”, Las Vegas, Nevada, 2016 (photo by Gianfranco Gorgoni)

Other authors prefer to place their proposals in natural spaces where asphalt and cement are far away. This is the work of Ugo Rondinone, which is committed to using elements of the environment, such as stones and giving them a layer of colour to create his compositions. As assembled pieces of large format, its columns of painted rocks rise as beings from another world and remind us of the indigenous totems that evoke the ancestor's spirits. His work swings between the landart and the popart taken to desolate and diaphanous places, as with his famous "Seven Magic Mountains", located in the Nevada desert.

Eduardo Catalano, “Floralis Genérica”, 2002 (via www.craiglotter.co.za)

Urban works are also vehicles for symbolic values. "Floralis Generica" is a huge flower-shaped sculpture made of aluminium, stainless steel and concrete. The architect Eduardo Catalano donated it to the city of Buenos Aires in 2002. Since then, it is installed in the United Nations Plaza, in the centre of an artificial lake. Thanks to an electric mechanism, the flower opens its 23-meter petals every morning and closes at dusk. With this simple gesture, this work represents the hope of each new day and the rebirth of life, and today has become a symbol of the city.

Costas Varotsos, “Dromeas”, 1994

In a review of the futuristic movement that triumphed in the first decades of the twentieth century, the work Dromeas ("The Runner") is a 12-meter high sculpture made entirely of superimposed green glass sheets. The Greek Costas Varotsos wanted to represent the strength, momentum and speed of the racers and pay homage to the start of the Olympic games, where athletics was one of the first disciplines to consolidate. In the middle of the Marathon’s Way, in Athens, this work seems to gain speed and erase its contours to the wind.

Charles Robb, “Charles La Trobe”, 2007

In this list, we cannot forget the sculpture of Charles La Trobe made by Charles Robb in 2007 that we can see in Melbourne. Charles Joseph La Trobe was a public figure in the Australian colony of Victoria driving several cultural projects between 1839 and 1854, a period in which the Royal Botanic Gardens, the State Library, the Victoria Museum, the National Gallery of Victoria and the University of Melbourne. Robb's decision to create a piece by presenting the figure face down was a way of questioning the meaning and purpose of contemporary monuments dedicated to celebrities or people of public interest. Today this work made of plastic and fibreglass can be seen at La Trobe University in Bundoora.

ABIERTO INFINITO. LO QUE EL CUERPO RECUERDA. PERFORMANCE CYCLE X ART MADRID'26

Art Madrid, committed to creating a discursive platform for artists working within the field of performance and action art, presents Abierto Infinito: lo que el cuerpo recuerda, a proposal inspired by Erving Goffman’s ideas in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Amorrortu Editores, Buenos Aires, 1997).

The project unfolds within a theoretical framework that directly engages with these premises, conceiving social interaction as a stage of carefully modulated performances designed to influence others’ perceptions. Goffman argues that individuals deploy both verbal and involuntary expressions to guide the interpretation of their behavior, sustaining roles and façades that define the situation for those who observe.

The body — the first territory of all representation — precedes both word and learned gesture. Human experience, conscious and unconscious alike, is inscribed within it. Abierto Infinito: lo que el cuerpo recuerda departs from this premise: representation inhabits existence itself, and life, understood as a succession of representations, transforms the body into a space of constant negotiation over who we are. In this passage, boundaries blur; the individual opens toward the collective, and the ephemeral acquires symbolic dimension. By inhabiting this interstice, performance simultaneously reveals the fragility of identity and the strength that emerges from encounter with others.

PERFORMANCE: ALTA FACTURA. BY COLECTIVO LA BURRA NEGRA

March 4 | 7:00 PM. Galería de Cristal of the Palacio de Cibeles.

"Discipline for Power.” Performance by La Burra Negra for Displacement of the Congress of Deputies by Roger Bernat. 2025.

Alta Factura subverts the conventional structure of the fashion runway to foreground the often-invisible processes that underpin artistic production. Through a series of conceptual textile works, the performance draws attention to the discipline of craft and the artist’s vulnerability, ultimately revealing those seams typically consigned to the margins, behind the scenes.

Colectivo La Burra Negra.

ABOUT EL COLECTIVO LA BURRA NEGRA

La Burra Negra is a nomadic performance art collective based in Málaga, founded in 2024 following its first residency in Totalán. The group is self-managed by Ascensión Soto Fernández, Gabriela Feldman de la Rocha, Sasha Camila Falcke, Sara Gema Domínguez Castillo, Sofía Barco Sánchez, and Regina Lagos González—six artists from diverse backgrounds and trajectories who met at the Hospital de Artistas at La Juan Gallery.

The collective brings together practitioners working across jewelry, painting, the performing arts, music, dance, cultural mediation, and arts management. Its activities include an annual residency in Totalán, the production of performative works, cultural mediation initiatives, and site-responsive interventions.

Since its inception, the collective has participated in the Periscopio series at La Térmica; presented A granel at the MVA in Málaga; carried out a number of actions in Totalán—the most recent during its second annual residency—and contributed its own proposals to the performance Displacement of the Congress of Deputies by Roger Bernat in Madrid.

At the core of La Burra Negra lies a commitment to collective creation and the exchange of knowledge. United in their effort to experiment with and disseminate performance art, the group explores the invisible dimensions of artistic labor—its temporalities, efforts, and relational dynamics, which so often remain unseen—as a form of critical affirmation.

Their practice emerges from dialogue and shared reflection, in the pursuit of decentralized spaces where art can be experienced and its processes made visible. Each residency and each action becomes an attempt to inhabit creation collectively, challenging conditions of precarity while fostering networks of care and collaboration that sustain both their own practice and that of those around them.