Yes you can

The simplest recipes are sometimes the best: all that competitors in the Red Bull Art of the Can contest need is a Red Bull can and their creative powers. The imaginative, witty and bizarre results of the competition could recently be admired in Atlanta and Dallas, while the exhibition in Minneapolis can still be visited until November 12.

Who says that you can only drink out of a Red Bull can? You can also bend it into crazy shapes, paint it, film or photograph it, glue things to it, melt it, turn it into a sculpture or produce 3D animations with it – sometimes with as much dexterity as Christopher and Nathalie Frye or Evans Willeto, the prize-winners in Atlanta and Dallas.

Creativity makes you fly

“My work comes from the spirit,” says Villeto, who convinced the judges with his sculpture “Ready to Fly”. His masterpiece – an elaborately crafted eagle in flight – took the artist 40 working hours to build. “The small details are what really count.” Further highlights of this year’s exhibitions were the life-size jet-skiier, the sculpture of a super hero, a Buddha statue and a table-football table – all created exclusively from Red Bull cans. “Everyone who comes to the Red Bull Art of the Can exhibition will find an object that they fall in love with,” raves designer Steve Kemble, one of the judges.

Recycled ideas

Creating works of modern art out of used Red Bull cans has already become an established annual event. Since 1997 Art of the Can contests have taken place in Austria, Germany, Holland, Switzerland, Great Britain and South Africa. 2006 was the second year that the contest – which is open to professional artists as well as to creative amateurs – took place in the USA. The exhibition at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis runs until November 12.