Don’t worry. They aren’t going to pop. Those squishy balloons are squishy at all… they’re resin! That said, they certainly create some drama with a capital D, no? This is the work of Belgian artist Christophe Delbeecke, and here are a few excerpts from an interview he did with Luisa Catucci Gallery, Berlin:

“I really love working with everyday objects because their banality offers a lot of different possibilities. We are so used to these kinds of objects that just a small modification can give them a totally new meaning, giving the chance to create something new and original … I love paradoxical things, because they push us to meditate and think in a deeper way. With the “Balloon Series” I wanted to materialize the tension between the balloons and the sharp objects, which upsets the “pre-installed software” of our brains. In fact, we think that the image we are looking at is actually impossible, but still it exists … The message behind my artworks is very paradoxical as well – it can be positive and full of hope like, for instance, “Nothing can beat me”, but once you switch the objects it can get really negative and hopeless.”

Oof, yes it can… I’m gonna opt for the “nothing can beat me” angle.