Top trunk...

Wandering around the big world wide interweb, you occasionally come across something that makes your mouth fall open in wonderment before your face splits with glee into a huge grin.

That's exactly what happened when I found Warsu and Nastamanus, the gravity defying elephants....

It's not every day you see an elephant balance on his trunk...

"Wursa & Nasutamanus" are balancing elephants created by Daniel Firman

Since 2008, French artist Daniel Firman has been exhibiting various versions of a sculptural installation piece named Nasutamanus all over the world. The artwork always depicts an elephant balancing on its trunk, sometimes out from the wall and at other times up from the floor.

Fiberglass and polymer meet in a unique sculpture depicting a life-size elephant balancing on its trunk.

Part of the exhibition entitled “The Circus as a Parallel Universe” in 2012 at Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, this installation named Nasutamanus follows the first balancing elephant exhibited in France back in 2008 and named Wursa.

Collaborating with a taxidermist ensured that this piece would be life-like enough to have a powerful visual impact. From the tip of his trunk through to his tail, he looks utterly lifelike. While floating or balancing he measures 7.2 feet x 17.3 feet x 44 inches ie the size of an actual elephant...

Whether in rococco splndour or in a vast industrial warehouse he never wobbles for a heartbeat....

It may just be me but the more I look at these images, it seems that this wonderful mammoth seems to be frozen in time as well as floating weighlessly alone in space and somehow that is making me feel a little sad and melancholy given what wonderfully social creatures elephants are...