Spend a little time in a hotel lobby and you can feel like you just took a good, long trip.

That’s true even when the hotel lobby exhibits the same design sense as the typical drab room in a chain hotel.

An Engel animal, at right, prepares to bound into the W Hotel’s lobby.

No fear of that at the W Hotel in midtown, which is now hosting an exhibit of Mary Engel’s sculptures.

The midtown W’s lobby and restaurant area struts some wild stuff. The ceiling swoops, the walls glow with multi-colored lights, and the furniture suggests a space odyssey.

An art patron admires an Engel work on display near the hotel’s front desk.

Engel’s work on display is her signature animal sculptures, where the surface of the animal is covered in small objects like coins or miniature toys. She has an elephant done up in bullets.

Bronze works by Engel seen in the foreground here, on a W patio, with mural by Molly Rose Freeman in the background.

Engel’s sculptures are beautiful, and usually convey a gentle quality crossed with a great, confounding level of surrealist detail.

Right now, the lobby at the W in midtown is a really good trip.

Mary Engel’s sculptures are on display at the W in midtown through December 21, 2013. Marcia Wood’s Gallery arranged the exhibit.