A new piece of art in LA says a lot about Hollywood's drug problem

This Oscar statue is definitely a hard partier.

Street artist Plastic Jesus placed a life-size Oscar statuette on Hollywood Boulevard at La Brea Avenue on Thursday morning, at the edge of where the street will be closed ahead of Sunday's awards.

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In addition to being big, this Oscar is far from the reserved gentleman movie buffs might expect: He's on all fours and snorting two lines of cocaine. 

The statuette's appearance comes a year after Plastic Jesus pulled a similar stunt, putting an eight-foot Oscar with a needle in his arm on Hollywood Boulevard. That statuette was a commentary on the death weeks earlier of Philip Seymour Hoffman due to a heroin overdose.

This year's statuette is also a commentary on Hollywood culture, according to Nick Stern, a photographer who works with the artist.

"The piece is intended to draw attention to Hollywood’s hidden problem of drug addiction that effects hundreds of people in the showbiz industry and is largely ignored until the death of a high profile A list celebrity," Stern said in a statement on Plastic Jesus' behalf to LAist.

SEE ALSO: Here's everything inside the $168,000 Oscar-nominee swag bag

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