Build your own Christo sculpture at home with an augmented reality app

Art lovers can now build their own AR version of Christo’s floating London Mastaba anywhere in the world thanks to a smartphone app.

Created from rows of horizontally stacked barrels, London Mastaba was exhibited by the Serpentine Gallery in the capital’s Hyde Park in 2018, where it was based on a floating platform in Serpentine Lake. Its unveiling was tied to a special exhibition of the Bulgarian-born artist Christo, and his wife and artistic partner, Jeanne-Claude.

The Acute Art app allows users to recreate the sculpture in augmented reality, allowing users to walk around the virtual reconstruction and explore the artwork from different angles.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude were well-known for their large-scale works, which temporarily altered urban and natural landscapes.

“The mastaba is an extraordinary form,” Christo said at the London exhibition launch in 2018. “It’s a different vision of height from different angles, different lines … It’s a movement, a burst of strength. When you’re in a lateral position and you look at the diagonal walls, you feel that the whole structure is going to explode. It is, above all, the result of a balance of forces. The colours will transform with the changes in the light and its reflection on the Serpentine Lake will be like an abstract painting.”