Mark Jenkins and his realistic street art

Mark Jenkins is an American artist well known for his impressive and original human sculptures, installed on different locations around cities, and his other tape sculptures, made with adhesive tape.

The street is Jenkins' canvas and the public plays the role of both the audience and the actors, sometimes simply admiring his work and other times actually interacting with it. He started different projects that appeared in the urban landscapes, one is called 'Storker Project' and it involves Jenkins placing kids made of scotch tape in abandoned corners of different cities. Another series is 'Embed' where, instead, the subjects get properly dressed to look realistic and interpret the most surreal circumstances.
His works show up in the most unexpected niches of towns, whether it's a pair of legs coming out of trash cans or a rag doll sleeping on a net from a construction site turned into an hammock, they're always granted to create a reaction on the unaware citizens, involving them and surprising them, taking their attention away from their daily tasks or technology devices.
As to what made him begin with these original street art creations, he says: "After I started creating art while I was living in Rio, the streets just seemed the best place to put them.

From the beginning I was more interested in sculpture as installation...an influence from Juan Munoz.

The people's reactions are part of the story."
Jenkins spread his street art in many cities, London, New York, Barcelona and Rome to name a few, and has currently got a book out, called 'The Urban Theater', that documents all of his street installations.