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In unexpected places you suddenly see it sitting there: a tiny bird. This sculpture by Tom Claassen is on the edge of the roof, on the corner of a shed, next to a flagpole. You just have to look really closely to spot the little animal. Claassen is widely known for his monumental sculptures of people and animals. Think of the five colossal concrete elephants that stand along the A6 near Almere. For Ypenburg, however, he came up with something very small. His little bird quickly acquired the popular nickname 'Yp'.

In all his sculptures, Claassen manages to simplify the form of humans and animals in such a way that in the end only the essence remains. You can still just see what he wants to depict. By greatly reducing while choosing round, full forms, this gives him room to shift accents in the composition within the main form. In this way, he gives an emotional charge to his archetypal forms. This sculptor is not concerned with the one-to-one imitation of reality.

Whether he works with sand, in wood, bronze or plaster, each material has its own skin and it determines how you experience a sculpture. An extra fold or a dent and his figures take on something endearing and cuddly. Even though Yp is small in size, his convex shape with short wings elicits many a passerby to say: oh look, how cute!