Realistic sculptures of dogs from old bicycle chains. Dog collection by Nirit Levav

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Israeli painter and sculptor Nirit Levav every day deals with packs of dogs of different breeds and sizes. Chain dogs, in the literal sense of the word, do not frighten the girl at all, despite the frightening appearance of some of them, not to mention the impressive weight of the majority. After all, it was she who gave them life, shaggy and smooth-haired, tall and tiny, domestic and hunting dogs, with her own hands created each of them, using bicycle chains and some other parts of old broken bicycles for this purpose. This is how a series of realistic sculptures appeared called Dog collection … Nirit Levav jokingly refers to herself as a "trash collector" as she regularly makes trips to landfills and garages, abandoned garages and bike service centers in search of resources for her work, where worn out bike chains are often thrown away. They are perfect for sculptures. For the first time, Nirit Levav thought about the sculpture of a dog when she saw a pile of rusty bicycle chains at the gate of one of the old abandoned garages. It seemed to her that it was a big dog curled up in a ball on last year's rotten leaves. And when it became clear that she was mistaken, somehow by itself the idea arose to turn the rusty pieces of iron into a sculpture of a dog.

The first creation of the artist was the statue of a large Rottweiler. She thought that a coarse heavy chain would be combined with the same stern character of the dog. But in fact, the sculpture turned out to be very cute and not at all scary. Then she took up the second sculpture of a dog, but of a different breed, long-haired. Leaving the edges of the bike chains free, Nirit Levav tried to depict the hanging fur of an Afghan hound, and the experiment was a success. Each successful experiment became an inspiration for the next. This is how in the Dog collection series there appeared full-size sculptures of greyhounds, cocker spaniels, poodles, lapdogs and dogs of other breeds, made from recycled bicycle chains, gears, pedals … In some cases, the artist even used the seat and steering wheel of a broken sports bike …

Bicycle chain dogs are a fusion of the artist's ardent love for animals and an equally ardent passion for working with metal objects. The entire series of realistic sculptures can be seen on the Nirit Levav website.