Australian artist Lawrence Argent joined a group of eager art lovers last week for the Friday afternoon unveiling of his 92-foot-tall stainless-steel Venus sculpture , set within a residential complex in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood . Now back in Colorado, where he serves as the head of sculpture at the University of Denver’s School of Art and Art History, the artist is enjoying his project’s successful completion. “It was a good moment,” he says.

Argent was hired for the public art project after his presentation to the late San Francisco property developer Angelo Sangiacomo. The artist and the real-estate magnate hit it off immediately, largely due to their mutual appreciation for classical forms of beauty represented in art. Because of the size of the plaza, enchantingly named the C’era Una Volta (Italian for “Once Upon a Time”), Argent knew he didn’t have a large footprint to work with. But that didn’t limit his vision—composed of 11 blocks of steel, Venus rises nearly as high as the Statue of Liberty. As one might imagine, Argent was keen to see the final product. While working on the immense structure in China, he’d only ever seen three of its blocks together at a time. Friday’s reveal was, in a word, “magical.” And magical it is—the adventurous sculptor set out to animate a static object, to create something personally investigative. “You want to walk around it,” he notes. Thanks to the reflections on its shiny surface, the sculpture appears to continually change expressions. Argent wants the plaza space to be an enlivening experience, to create a sense of wonderment.

The new sculpture, from the ground.

Other elements of the piazza include Carrara marble fragments depicting interpretations of celebrated works such as The Three Graces and The Winged Victory of Samothrace, as well as a mosaic path and a seven-foot tall glass installation. “It all started with the Venus,” Argent says. And what a beautiful start.