Hyperallergic noted a suspicious similarity between an almost-complete sculpture (which made the Chinese news rounds today) in the city of Karamay and Chicago’s 2006 sculpture by Anish Kapoor — The Bean (fine, officially titled Cloud Gate.)
The new sculpture, they note, does not have an artist’s name attached to it, so there’s just as much of a (highly unlikely) possibility that Kapoor (secretly) made it as anyone else on the planet. The key factor differentiating the two works: the Kapoor is bean shaped, and the whoever’s-this-is bears the title “Big Oil Bubble,” suggesting, indeed, that it’s big-oil-bubble shaped. It also has a flashier underbelly, adorned with LED lights, and some mini-but-still-by-oil-bubble-standards-large droplets beneath it.
There is a reason for such a big oil bubble as this oil bubble to grace Karamay — the city in which it’s been erected gets its name from the word for “black oil” in the Uyghur language; the sculpture was constructed atop the historical site of the city’s first well.
Obviously, you can determine for yourself whether the seeming knockoff is bubble, bean or something in between: