SpY’s Ovoid Interventions: Transforming Spaces in Riyadh and Rome

SpY’s latest projects, Ovoid and Ovoids, take two distinct approaches to spatial intervention—one in the open air of Riyadh, the other within an exhibition space in Rome. Vastly differing in scale and context, both works use form, movement, and light to challenge how we perceive and navigate the environments we often take for granted.

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia – 2024

Public space is often shaped by necessity—by the logic of roads, bridges, and infrastructure that prioritize function over contemplation. Within these engineered landscapes, overlooked voids emerge: spaces beneath highways, gaps between buildings, and neglected urban margins. Street artists, including interventionist sculptors, have long recognized their potential, transforming them into sites of meaning. Ovoid, SpY’s latest large-scale installation, reclaims one such space beneath the Wadi Hanifah Bridge in Riyadh, inserting light, reflection, and scale into what could be considered an unremarkable void.

Suspended within this architectural remnant, Ovoid is both an assertion of presence and an activation of absence. The 35-meter-high glowing red form is not just framed by its surroundings; it forces a reconsideration of them. Bridges are built for passage, leaving their undersides as liminal, forgotten zones. By occupying this limbo with a hovering, illuminated form, SpY may compel the public to notice, challenging how we perceive and engage with the built environment.

This act of spatial transformation is deeply connected to the ethos of street art, where artists repurpose barriers and margins as arenas of possibility. Ovoid alters its setting, shifting attention from what is above to what is below, urging us to see the city differently. Reflected in the moving water beneath, it extends beyond its own materiality—both physical and ephemeral, solid and intangible. It is a reminder that cities are not only a collection of static structures but evolving spaces waiting to be redefined.

Rome, Italy – 2024

Ovoids takes the organic abstraction of SpY’s outdoor interventions inside the exhibition space and reforms it into a kinetic environment. Suspended from the ceiling, a series of elongated red forms—somewhere between paddles, seeds, and plum tomatoes—sway in slow, deliberate arcs. Their movement is rhythmic yet unpredictable, their scale imposing yet oddly humorous. As they hover and oscillate above, they create a shifting landscape of perception, inviting viewers to navigate around them.

Like its outdoor counterpart, Ovoids plays with presence and absence, stillness and motion. Here, the interplay between structure and fluidity is heightened, as the sculptures are neither fixed nor entirely free. They exist in a perpetual state of transformation, blurring the line between the mechanical and the organic. The slow pendular motion alters the spatial experience, pulling you into a hypnotic engagement where time seems to stretch and contract.

One moment, the paddles seem to loom overhead with imposing weight; the next, they glide harmlessly past, a dance both mesmerizing and slightly absurd. With the spirit of experimentation, like SpY’s interventions in public space, Ovoids reconfigures the familiar and leaves the viewer reconsidering the unseen forces that shape their surroundings.

Commissioned by Ballon Museum