A Czech artist has made a mechanical sculpture of an athlete doing push-ups out of a traditional London double-decker bus.
The creative piece called "London Boosted" is aimed at celebrating the Olympic Games, which open in the British capital on Friday.
David Cerny has kept the bus outside the Czech Olympic House in London's Islington locality.
Cerny's previous works have enraged European politicians and have allegedly made fun of rival artists.
Cerny bought the 1957 bus from an owner in the Netherlands, attached two huge arms, an electrical engine and topped it with some engineering skills.
The 6-ton bus moves up and down on bright red arms, raising the chassis into various angles. This comes along with recorded groaning voice and video projections in the windows.
"There is one common exercise for every sportsman in the world, and that is push-ups," Cerny told Reuters. "It is training for sport activities but at the same time it is also punishment in armies and prisons. So the push-ups are a very universal physical activity...It is in a way very ironic."
In the Czech Republic, he once painted pink a Soviet tank, which was serving as a monument of the 1945 liberation of Prague.
His "Shark", was a statue of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein floating in formaldehyde. It was meant to jeer British artist Damien Hirst's embalmed shark. The piece was banned from exhibitions in Belgium and Poland.
Other examples of his satire include large replicas of guns and posters in London back in the 1990s. The intension was to make people observe a "Day of Killing" to control population growth, as part of an art fair.
With such interesting history of creative works, the London bus seems uncontroversial.
"We will see how long the athlete can work out for," Cerny said. "Let's hope he will exercise for the full three weeks. He will be the biggest sportsman there."
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