They say that one man’s junk can be another person’s treasure. The works of Brazilian artist Michel Torres Costa are great proof of that. Torres uses discarded metal from scrap yards and workshops to create impressive sculptures of humans, animals, and more.
Torres Costa initially started working with metal as a 15-year-old boy, becoming a welder and working on metal sculptures. After 10 years in the metallurgy sector, he was looking to “escape the monotonous reality” and decided to follow his longtime passion for art by starting to create artworks from resin.
In the following five years, Torres Costa became an expert in resin but once again felt being drawn to the metal. His brother-in-law owned a mechanical workshop, and one day, the artist took home some metal scraps and created a wall horse. He liked the experience so much that he decided to dedicate himself to metal art moving forward.
Since making a wall horse, Torres Costa went on to create more than 50 metal sculptures using a wide range of pieces ranging from motorcycle crowns, chains, and ratchets to bolts and metal pipes. His meticulously detailed works have gained him a huge social media following and led to exhibitions in his native country of Brazil and around the world.
“Everything that a person thinks is garbage can be transformed into something with meaning and transformed into art, with beauty, giving a new face to a material that would never be used again, or would be rolling around, polluting our world,” Costa Torres explained in an interview with Euro News.
Continue scrolling to check out more of Torres Costa’s creations below.
