Ego Leonard is a Dutch painter and sculptor, and possibly an anonymous guerrilla artist, whose works prominently feature outsized toy building block figures. Sometimes the name also is applied to sculpture, apparently made by Leonard, which have been found on beaches at various locations in the world since the late 2000s. The sculptures are in the form of "mini-figures", but constructed from fiberglass enlarged to two and a half meters in height, and have the message, "No Real Than You Are" in capital letters written on their torsos. The appearance of an "Ego Leonard" giant figure on Siesta Beach, Florida became number two on the Time list of the "Top 10 Oddball-News Stories of 2011." It is unclear whether Ego Leonard is name of a person or merely is a fictional character as the figure, but it is most likely a fictional name, as Ego Leonard can be reworked to read L, Ego or L-E-G-O.
The first over-sized mini-figure attributed to Leonard was retrieved from the sea off Zandvoort, Netherlands, on August 7, 2007. It had a yellow head and a blue torso. It was suggested at the time that "No Real Than You Are" might become a meme similar to "All your base are belong to us", or that a word is missing and it should read, "no more real than you are". A second giant toy building block figure was found off Brighton Beach, United Kingdom on October 29, 2008. The green, yellow, and red sculpture again bore the words "No Real Than You Are" on its torso. A spokeswoman for the toy building block company stated that it was a surprise to the company, and may have been related to an exhibition in the next few weeks that "Ego Leonard" would have in London. Another similar toy building block figure appeared in the sea off Siesta Key Beach, Florida, United States on October 25, 2011. The sculpture is about 2 meters in height and weighs about 50 kilograms. Its head and arms were yellow, with a red torso and green legs, and it had the message "No real than you are" in capital letters on its front and "Ego Leonard" and the number 8 on its back.
It was suggested that this may have been a viral marketing publicity stunt to advertize the newly opened toy building block amusement park in Florida. A spokesperson for the park and its parent company denied that there was any connection to the giant mini-figure. Sarasota authorities referred to the object as Mr. Leonard. Reporters from the local newspaper, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, sent an e-mail to Leonard and received a reply. It purported to be from the sculpture and stated that it had been "a hell of a swimm" [sic], but that it was enjoying the weather and friendly people, and was "gonna stay here for a while." The Sararsota County Sheriffs Office took the sculpture into custody, awaiting its release to Jeff Hindman, who first found it in October 2011. On January 26, 2012, however, the giant toy building block figure was given to Denise Kowal, the founder of the Sarasota Chalk Festival. A toy building block figure similar to the Sarasota sculpture appeared on the beach at Topanga in Los Angeles County, California on July 11, 2012. The figure appeared at the Sarasota Chalk Festival from October 28 to November 7, 2012. He remained in the custody of the founder of the festival, Denise Kowal, until January 2013.
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