Here’s a puzzle that might take a while to solve…

From the elaborate murals that adorn the sides of buildings in Satwa, to the Burj Khalifa – essentially the largest man-made sculpture the world has ever seen – Dubai is a city that is certainly no stranger to large-format artwork.

Well, you can now add a giant jigsaw puzzle to that list.

Earlier today Australian artist Guido van Helten unveiled his latest masterwork, a 135m long and 12m high reconfigurable mural made up of 63 custom-painted shipping containers.

Dubbed ‘Red Bull Curates – Jigsaw’, the 207-tonne art installation is the result of 18 days and 288 man-hours of work, in which the artist used over 500 litres of paint.

Painted in an original deconstructed format, when the the giant pieces are put together they form a monochrome pair of solemn-looking eyes. It took two 100-tone cranes over a 48 hours to assemble the massive work at the Autism Rocks Arena near Dubai Outlet Mall where it is located (remember, if you’re checking it out, this Saturday May 6 is the Bieber concert out there, so pick another day to avoid traffic).

Speaking about how the idea of the piece came about, van Helten said “I don’t think it’s something that has ever been done, and I see shipping containers as very interesting objects now. They’re all around the world and they are transient and they move,” he added, “And those containers, who knows where they’ve been before and how they’ve ended up here?”

We’d recommend checking the shipping labels on them but, regardless, they do make for a rather uniquely massive canvas.

You can the watch the mural come together in the video below.

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Photos: Supplied