Watch: These sculptures can be stretched and bent. That’s both fascinating and grotesque
The secret? The sculptures are made of thousands of sheets of recycled paper
At first glance, it’s a regular sculpture. Just a standard bust in the classical style. But try pulling the head upwards, and the neck behaves like rubber. It’s a strangely fascinating but grotesque effect.
This is possible because the sculptures are made with thousands of sheets of recycled paper. Li Hingbo, a Chinese artist, is known for these mind-and-body-bending sculptures made with a honeycomb-like formation of paper, that can expand, contract and retract.
The sculpting is a painstaking process, with layers of glue and sheets of paper being stacked on one another – which can take months for each sculpture. Each sheet of paper has to be treated individually. Watch the process in the video below:
The original honeycomb technique is an age-old art seen in paper gourds in China, which are hung during weddings and celebrations. Inspired by this, and given his own prior work in book-publishing, Li began to work on his new vocation.