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Sneakers have long ago gone beyond being just ordinary footwear. Collecting coveted kicks is now a booming mainstream passion. But what would you say to turning this element of pop culture into artworks? The featured sneaker-inspired sculptures look so awesome, it is almost a pity you can’t wear them.

Japanese artist Kosuke Sugimoto, also known as Shoetree, utilizes vintage sneakers as planters and flower pots. Inspired by the sight of plant roots stretching across the ruins of collapsed moss-covered buildings, he transforms old unusable sneakers like the Nike Air Max Uptempo 1995 and Air Max Classic 1996  into sculptures.

The artworks are created based on the concept of justification of deterioration, in order to achieve balance and the optimal level of exaggeration so as to ensure that they do not become mere decorations. The process called hydrolysis, which is the main part of the deterioration, takes around three years to take effect under bad storage conditions, and five years under normal conditions.

French artist Christophe Guinet, also known as Monsieur Plant, also merges nature and sneakers. Using Using bark, moss, petals, flowers, wood and other environmental materials, he transforms the shoes into sneaker-inspired sculptues. These living works, though short-lived, can also be worn.

According to the artist, he creates “meticulous projects where our icons are rethought in the slightest detail, where every plant or seed is deposited with dexterity, and ally both by realising poetic and contemporary projects.”

Sneaker-shaped sculptures by Gabriel Dishaw, junk-metal artist based in Indianapolis, USA, have nothing to do with nature. On the contrary, they are crafted utilizing wires, staples, bolts, screws, old typewriters and motherboard scraps and other e-waste materials, with individual parts bent into shape and stuck together with glue. Ironically named Air Jordan Colossus, Junk Dunk and Blazer Pentium 1.0, the sculptures are conceived as a part of a shoes series where the artist revisits some of his favorite classic sneaker silhouettes.

 

Each sculpted shoe weighs from five to twenty pounds, with plenty of details to make them easily identifiable, from accurate stitch patterns to movable shoe tongues and laces. The shoes come with their own boxes, which are similarly sculpted out of junk metal pieces.