On July 8, 2020, the enormous statue was unveiled on the Schiedamseweg in the Bospolder-Tussendijken district Forest fox unveiled. The giant sculpture is sixteen meters long and ten meters high. The whole thing weighs 65 tons. The giant fox has a beautiful reddish brown hue and a pink plastic bag in its mouth. The Forest fox was created by Florentijn Hofman, who uses this artwork to depict a relationship between the city and nature. With his fox, he wanted to create an image that deals with how nature works its way into urban fringe areas. Nature contributes to the well-being of urban people. Hofman arrived at this design in two ways. The first is the name of this city district, Bospolder-Tussendijken – a combination of forest, polder and dikes. It is a reminder of an invisible past. The second way was by studying the Schiedamseweg in more detail. The street has many points of interest, but entrepreneurs and residents saw the potential in a work of art as a crowd puller and hoped for an eye-catcher. The Municipality of Rotterdam approached BKOR for this assignment. Hofman and three other artists were asked to create a design for this busy street in a competition. Hofman found many parts of the street too busy, too narrow or too remote, which meant that the Delfshaven side in particular was out of the question. But the other end, towards Marconiplein, could use a gesture. In that part nature enters the city and there is also the market of the Grote Visserijstraat with all the plastic bags that blow around. The invasion of the fox in the city, as well as the ban on plastic bags were messages that played at the time that Hofman started his design in 2016. Forest fox is an ode to both: nature and the plastic bag. Did that fox take the bag? Is he going to clean up junk? Or did he run errands? Because of that unexplained addition, it tells an ambiguous story, just as it is an absurd appearance here along the street. Read here the entire essay on the Forest polder fox.
