They go for the monumental when they do public art in San Francisco. Most notably, this piece – Three Heads, Six Arms – in front of City Hall.
It is one in a series of works by Zhang Huan, temporarily placed at the Civic Center. Zhang, inspired by the desecration of religious statues during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, reconstructs fragments of Buddhist statues on a grand scale to reestablish their former dignity.
Less than a kilometre away, at Octavia and Hayes, is another piece – Ecstasy – by Karen Cusolito and Dan Das Mann. Also temporarily located at the minipark (part of the post-Central Freeway redevelopment described here in Price Tags 81), it was first displayed at the Burning Man Festival in 2007.
Originally part of Crude Awakening, this figure was one of eight 
surrounding a 99-foot tall oil derrick. “The figures represented the ‘faithful’ – the religious peoples of the world in their various postures of worship, all joining together in homage of the ominous symbol of the oil derrick.”
Yup, the ironic timing is obvious.
But this figure expresses “a sudden change of attitude and belief in hope, a moment of being overcome by passionate optimism in a future beyond our culture’s dependency on fossil fuel.”
man, i can’t decide whether to like that weird nucleat mutant buddha thing. i’m just thankful that it’s temporary, so i won’t have to worry myself with that daily circle of thought. the octavia park one, by contrast is easy to love. this is the second reclaimed wood sculpture on that site (and second overall). the first, inaugural piece, was a pair of arches in the same genre, beautiful. a little known fact: their sitting tucked away on that former parking lot that’s slowly becoming a park, on laguna and hayes. yes, sir.