Tony Feher, Buoy (2014), Akron Art Museum, Ohio. Photo: courtesy Akron Art Museum.
Tony Feher, Buoy (2014), Akron Art Museum, Ohio. Photo: courtesy Akron Art Museum.

As part of his current exhibition at Ohio’s Akron Art Museum, New York–based artist Tony Feher is suspending three giant red buoys from the institution’s roof.

The museum’s home, renovated in 2007 by Austrian architecture firm Coop Himmelb(l)au, incorporates historic buildings and modern architectural elements, including the dramatic “Roof Cloud,” a steel and aluminum armature cantilevered over the museum and the street below. The 54-inch buoys hang upside down from this striking structure, hovering 20 feet above the street like cheerful wrecking balls.

Making Feher’s vision for the public art installation a reality caused a bit of a spectacle, with lane closures and crowds gawking at the giant crane being used to hoist the buoys in place, as reported by the Akron Beacon Journal.

Feher is known for his ingenious reinterpretation of seemingly mundane materials. In the museum’s interior, he has transformed a simple hallway into a glowing blue passage by embellishing the windows with blue painter’s tape for an installation titled Judith Resnik, in honor of the Akron astronaut who died during the 1986 Challenger explosion.

The buoys are already in place, and the full exhibition, organized by the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston, opens April 12 and will remain on view through August 17.