What do you get when you cross an artist from Melbourne, Australia with a banana and the Buddhist concept of impermanence?

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Via Geekosystem:

When most of us are confronted with a ripe banana, we either turn it into banana bread or send it hurtling toward the trash, but Australian artist Jun Gil Park turns your run-of-the-mill banana into astounding works of art by drawing on the fruits with a toothpick. Park uses a standard toothpick to scratch pictures on the skin of bananas; the harder he presses the darker the bruise on the fruit becomes. After about five minutes, the oxidation will start to show, and after a day or two it will become pretty dark, contrasted against the fruit’s yellow skin.

These are some seriously cool bananas, with a lifespan that falls somewhere between a sand mandala and the works of Andy Goldsworthy.

Whether or not the artist intended these works to evoke the transient nature of all things, they certainly strike me as a powerful reminder to avoid attachment to the material world.