'Kladenská koule' ('Kladno Ball')

In 1991, Viktor Stříbrný, the self-taught painter, sculptor, and blacksmith whose surname means “silver” in Czech, created a stainless-steel, spherical sculpture with a fibrous-looking sliver of metal gently dropping from its core. While the sculpture is officially known as “Plastika s kosmologickou a kosmogonickou tématikou – Vesmír II,” or “sculpture with cosmological and cosmogonical themes – Universe II” in Czech, locals more often refer to it by one of its many nicknames, including “ocelová koule” (steel ball), “kladenská koule” (kladno ball), “ocelový pomeranč” (steel orange), or simply “pomeranč” (orange). It’s two meters high, two meters long, two meters wide, and extends two meters beneath the ground.

Originally, the sculpture was part of a much more expansive installation that included a pool and a metal water lily depicted in different stages of development. Older than the orange, this part of the sculpture was installed in 1985, but the pool was removed for unknown reasons in the mid-1990s.