An Artist Discovered A New And Incredible Way To Recycle Old, Unused Tires

Old tires are hard to get rid of — you can only have so many tire swings, after all. Luckily, artist Yong Ho Ji found a way to use old tires in a way that’s pretty ingenious, especially since the results look like creatures from a horror movie.

Ji uses cut-up tires to create hulking black forms, which take the shapes of animals and hybrid creatures that are almost straight from the fogs of mythology. The texture and color of the tires, as well as their strips woven and shaped into the creatures’ bodies, are reminiscent of the biomechanical forms of H.R. Giger, best known for designing the creature in Alien. They look like pipes and tubing, and eerily remind the viewer of muscle and sinew. The bodies of the creatures seem to twist and pulsate, and the decidedly man-made material on the natural (or supernatural) forms suggests a bridge between the real and the invented, nature and artifact.

Since he started working with this medium, Ji has been prolific, creating large-scale tire sculptures. Some are more straightforward representations of animals. Some, like those above, belong in the realms of the fantastic. There’s also a short documentary about him, which you can see here: