A 60-Foot Meditating Man Made of Shipping Containers Has Officially Become a Hamptons Problem

East Hampton says Max Levai’s monumental sculpture is a code violation. Levai’s neighbors just think it’s ugly. Everyone agrees it’s enormous.

There’s a massive, contemplative giant planted right in Montauk’s open fields, and East Hampton is not amused — not by the art, anyway, and definitely not by the rebel paperwork.

This giant isn’t a flesh-and-blood thing. It’s “Meditating Figure,” a public spectacle by LA’s Matt Johnson, stitched together from a dozen battered shipping containers that spent years crisscrossing the globe before landing here, refashioned into a serene 60-foot colossus.

Johnson’s behemoth anchors LA Monumental, a group show that sprawls across the Ranch, Max Levai’s 16-acre hybrid art space and horse farm. Levai — if you don’t recognize the name — is a dealer with Marlborough Gallery roots, now permanently installed in Hamptons drama after his 2021 land grab.

The show also features heavy hitters like Nancy Rubins and Paul McCarthy, but Johnson’s metal yogi, visible from Montauk Highway and nestled uncomfortably close to the lighthouse, is the one in hot legal water.

Trouble at the Ranch

Here’s the beef: Last month, East Hampton filed a lawsuit. Their logic runs like this — a 60- foot. welded sculpture is basically a structure, and structures need permits, period. The Ranch now faces four violations for skipping the building permit, blowing off the architectural review board, ducking a certificate of occupancy, and messing with a conservation easement meant to keep the land agricultural.

That land actually belongs to the town — or at least the development rights do — so East Hampton isn’t playing around. On July 31, the town got a stay to halt any extra construction or removal at the site until lawyers finish mud wrestling through the details. Johnson was named in the suit at first, but the town eventually dropped him, leaving Levai and his Ranch to shoulder the blame. Levai’s legal crew hasn’t said a word.

The board voted 4-1 for legal action, with councilman Tom Flight the only holdout.

During the meeting, Flight punctured the mood with the question everyone’s thinking: Does East Hampton really get to dictate what counts as acceptable art on private land?

He called it a public artwork and admitted he wasn’t keen on the town policing people’s displays — even when the display is literally the size of a house. The town’s lawyer didn’t flinch.

Officials insist it’s about safety, not taste, though locals keep side-eyeing the sculpture, unable to resist the urge to call it “a lot.” But East Hampton’s official line? It’s not about looks. It’s about laws.

This isn’t Levai’s first rodeo out here, either. Last summer, his neighbor Adam Lindemann — a well-known collector and former dealer — wound up in cuffs after allegedly shoving Levai during a murky dispute over zoning at the Ranch.

Let’s just say the property has a habit of turning high-minded art into neighborhood soap opera.

So, for now, the giant stays put. He meditates mid-lawsuit, mid-controversy, watching the traffic crawl by, while lawyers try to decide whether art that weighs as much as a building deserves the same paperwork.