Sculptures in Public Space
Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics Sculpture
“Confusion of the Prism” — Beijing Olympic Park, 2008 · Metal
In a process of almost three years that began in 2005, 2,800 proposals were received through an international call and reduced to 500 by the first jury. The projects were exhibited on Wangfujing Street in Beijing and put to a public vote. In this final stage, “Confusion of the Prism” was selected as one of the 100 sculptures to be installed in the Beijing Olympic Village.
“Confusion of the Prism” is a monumental abstraction exploring the tension between rigid geometry and movement in time. The rational, balanced mass of the prism is broken by the momentum and kinetic urge of “confusion”. Angled metal surfaces following one another suspend the stillness of the mass and create the illusion of speed frozen in space.
Without reducing it to figurative representation, the sculpture encodes the effort, the sudden burst and the body racing against time at the heart of the Olympics as pure structural energy. Using void as a constituent element, its angled planes constantly recreate light and shadow, holding a dynamic dialogue with the space.
Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics Sculpture
“Lyrical Message” — Beijing Olympic Park, 2022 · Stainless steel
In the selection process that began in 2020 to build a public art collection for the Beijing 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, 1,611 proposals were received from 50 countries, and the jury selected 15 sculptures from 6 countries. “Lyrical Message” was among the 15 sculptures installed in the Beijing International Olympic Park.
Placed along the marathon route of the Olympic Park, the sculptures were arranged as an open-air museum to reflect the culture and spirit of the Olympics and to bring the world’s cultures closer together, and they are regarded as a cultural and artistic legacy left to the city of Beijing.
“Lyrical Message” seeks to add new meaning to the lives of its viewers within the infinity and cycle of the universe. Shaped by feelings of mutual awareness and tolerance, the loop at its centre, symbolising a strand of DNA, speaks of the common ground and foundation of life. The stainless steel symbolises universal knowledge and wholeness in a spherical form, while its reflective surface mirrors the surroundings. The sculpture aims to contribute to the international Olympic spirit and to human culture.
2014 Qingdao International EXPO Sculpture Park
2014 Pingtan, China – Mystical
2019 Bila Tserkva, Ukraine – Lyrical Message
2019 Minqin, China – Poetic Circle
“Poetic Circle” — Minqin/Suwu Desert Sculpture Park, China, 2019 · Steel, 600 × 600 × 600 cm
The monumental sculpture Poetic Circle was produced in 2019 for the 2nd Minqin International Desert Sculpture Exhibition in China and permanently installed in the Minqin/Suwu Desert. Selected by an international jury as one of 46 works from 2,327 proposals submitted by 538 artists from 63 countries, the sculpture, standing some six metres high, creates a powerful spatial focus within the desert landscape.
Developed with computer-aided modelling and CNC laser-cutting technology, the work explores the concepts of void, rhythm, movement and continuity through a circular structure formed by successive metal plates.
Poetic Circle transforms the flawless geometry of the circle into a fragmented, permeable structure, blurring the boundary between mass and void. The successive steel layers visually lighten the sculpture’s heavy metallic character while generating a continuous rhythm around the form. Here, the void is not merely the space enclosed by the sculpture but an active element that constructs its form — a “material” as decisive as the metal itself. This approach is consistent with Yardımcı’s broader treatment of void as a form-giving element in his sculpture.
Rising against the boundless horizontality of the desert, the circular form brings the idea of natural cycles face to face with the human desire to impose geometric order. As wind, light and shifting viewpoints pass between the metal layers, the sculpture ceases to be a fixed object and becomes an ever-changing visual experience. Poetic Circle can thus be read not simply as a monument placed in the desert, but as a geometric metaphor for the unbroken relationship between time, space, nature and humankind.
2019 Hengshui, China – Mystical Message
“Mystical Message (Mistik İleti)” — Hengshui International City Sculpture Art Festival, Hengshui, China, 2019 · Stainless steel, 350 × 350 × 350 cm
İlker Yardımcı’s monumental sculpture “Mystical Message” (Mistik İleti) is one of the 30 public sculptures selected for the Hengshui International City Sculpture Art Festival held in China in 2019. Chosen in an international selection in which 544 artists from 38 countries took part with 1,679 works, it was among the pieces planned for permanent placement at the Hengshui Olympic Complex.
“Mystical Message” is a work that questions the relationship between geometric order and organic movement, bringing the formal possibilities of contemporary sculpture into public space. The rhythmic structure formed by its metal surfaces establishes a dynamic balance between solid and void, inviting the viewer to explore not only the outer limits of the form but also its inner space.
In this work, the void ceases to be a part subtracted from the mass and becomes a constitutive element of the composition. The relationships between repetition, rhythm and volume allow a mathematical order to evolve into a poetic expression.
In this respect, “Mystical Message” can be regarded not merely as an art object placed in the urban environment, but as a contemporary sculpture that establishes a silent communication between space, perception and people.
2020 Istanbul – “Contemporary Art at Tersane-i Amire”
“Lyrical Message” — Museum Gazhane, Istanbul, 2020 · Corten steel
İlker Yardımcı’s sculpture “Lyrical Message” forges a strong relationship between the industrial memory of Istanbul’s Museum Gazhane and the language of contemporary sculpture. The work was produced in 2020 within the “Contemporary Art at Tersane-i Amire” project, organised by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and Şehir Hatları, in the working environment of the 565-year-old Golden Horn (Haliç) Shipyard, and was later installed in the public space of Museum Gazhane.
The geometric structure, rhythm, void and movement that define Yardımcı’s sculptural language are reorganised on a monumental scale in “Lyrical Message”. Academic assessments of the artist’s work likewise emphasise that the concepts of “interval, rhythm and void” bring his sculptures close to a musical structure. The work is therefore perceived less as a single, static mass than as a visual rhythm that changes together with the space around it.
The sculpture’s metallic, industrial character forms a particularly meaningful union with Museum Gazhane, a former production facility transformed into a venue for culture and the arts. “Lyrical Message” thus becomes not merely an independent object placed in a space, but a public landmark that makes visible the continuity between industry, technology, human production and contemporary art. In the Museum Gazhane inventory, the work is registered as İlker Yardımcı’s sculpture “Lyrical Message”.
2021 Bila Tserkva, Ukraine – The Gaze
2023 Harbin, China – Lyrical Movement
This work was created at an event organized by the International Sculpture Symposium Alliance (ISSA), whose Secretary General is Chinese sculptor Yang Liu. İlker Yardımcı, himself a member of ISSA, took part in Harbin at the alliance’s invitation.
In 2023, representing Türkiye at an international open-air sculpture event held on the banks of the Songhua River in Harbin, China, sculptor İlker Yardımcı created an original monumental sculpture for public space. The artist’s sculptural language, built on metal plates and modular construction, engages directly with Harbin’s industrial past and the fluid topography of the water.
Permanently installed on site as part of the event in Harbin, the work draws on the steel / layered metal and parametric slicing technique the artist often favours. Designed with the environmental dynamics of the riverbank — defined by wind, water and an open horizon — in mind, the sculpture does not present a monolithic mass; instead, it turns voids and intervals into the principal elements that carry the form.
Rather than creating a solid, monolithic volume, Yardımcı’s sculpture takes shape through steel plates stacked at rhythmic horizontal and vertical intervals. This method visually lightens metal, a heavy industrial material. The light passing through the gaps, the reflections on the river’s surface, and the way the layers overlap and open up as the viewer’s vantage point shifts give the work a kinetic transparency. The sculpture does not screen off its surroundings; on the contrary, it frames the landscape by letting it pass through its own slices.
Rising on the banks of the Songhua River, the form echoes the rippling and sedimenting movements of water in a structural language. The distances between the layers and their gradual widening recall a liquid wave brought to a standstill. The sculpture sets up a deliberate contrast between the fluid nature of water and the hardness of industrial steel: it freezes fluidity in a hard material while instilling the material with a sense of rhythmic movement.
The modular, sectional structure adopted by the artist establishes a direct interaction with viewers in public space. The work is not merely a monumental object to be contemplated from afar; as viewers walk around it, the layers close and open, and the sculpture’s ratio of solid to void is constantly transformed. This takes the sculpture beyond a static monument and turns it into a dynamic spatial experience that depends on the viewer’s movement.
İlker Yardımcı’s work in Harbin is a balanced example of public art that, within contemporary sculpture, deconstructs the physical weight of the material and reconciles the tension between urban scale and nature through rhythm and void.
In winter, when the Songhua River freezes, the work becomes part of an entirely different scene on the frozen river.
