French street artist JR has created two new amazing public works in celebration of the upcoming Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro and two enormous athletes now decorate the city’s urban landscape, evoking the spirit of the games.
The immense installations were made by canvassing images onto construction scaffolding, a new technique for the artist. His use of construction material allows the installations to both distract from, and complement, Rio’s surrounding urban sprawl.
JR is known for his use of perspective and his penchant for optical illusions. Earlier this summer, he put his trompe l’oeil skills to use in making the Louvre disappear, and elsewhere, his projects in South Africa and New York could only be seen from a bird’s eye view. These epic athletes are not the first project the artist has done in Rio. His project titled, Women are Heroes saw him paste huge photographs of the faces and eyes of local women onto one of the city’s most violent favelas.