Poor old Florentijn Hofman. You might remember I wrote about him back in January, getting in a huff and sailing his giant rubber duck out into the sunset.
Not only did Hofman fail to protect his gigantic floating sculpture from copycats, but the oversized inflatable duck subsequently popped in Taiwan Harbour. That must have been a sight.
Now, undaunted by failure and clearly possessed with a curious passion for producing enormous cutesy animals, he's built a giant moon rabbit.
Hofman's 'Moon Rabbit', made of paper, wood and Styrofoam, sat for a while on the curved grassy roof of an old military bunker at an army base in Taiwan, looking dreamily up towards the sky.
In Chinese folklore, Chang'e, the goddess of the Moon had drifted there after stealing a pill which made her float into orbit. To keep her company, she had a jade rabbit (Yutu) who mixed her potions for her. I read somewhere that the markings on the surface of the Moon look a bit like a rabbit perched over a cauldron.
There was no mistaking Hofman's moon rabbit. It is enormous; at least, it was. While trying to move it piece-by-piece, a spark from a worker's chainsaw ignited the paper and sent the sculpture into a ball of flame. Yutu is no more.
He doesn't have much luck, Florentijn.
"The Moon Rabbit," he said, a few weeks ago, before the fire, "is laying against the bunker, dreaming about life and dreaming the impossible possible and creating its own true stories."
Aww. It's rather a sad metaphor, don't you think? Don't we all have paper dreams?
Poor thing. I don't think he'll be undeterred though. He'll soon be back, building an enormous tortoise or an owl made out of bottle tops or something. I don't think he should stop dreaming.
Neither should you.
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