Laguna Beach, California-based artist Andrew Myers suspended 1,200 hand-painted acrylic cubes from 800 yards of stainless steel wire to create an remarkably precise sculpture that, when viewed head-on, forms the pixelated face of a man. Titled My Dealer is Not a Square, the unique portrait depicts Lawrence Cantor, Myers’ art dealer, in a configuration that’s both abstract and impressively true to life.
Myers, who is best known for his time-intensive artwork made of countless screws, branched out to a new medium for this recent piece. “In my pursuit to always create unique art, I realized that what is special about the screw pieces is how one screw by itself is irrelevant, but combining thousands of them to create one image is what makes those pieces special,” he told us via email. “In this same manner, I stared thinking about a single pixel. A lot of people have done art with pixels, but I have never seen a sculpture where each pixel floats in its own space and still creates one image. The concept began as a sculpture that would float directly off the wall, but turned out to be more of a chandelier-looking sculpture.”
From concept to finish, it took Myers and his team seven months to complete the piece. The artist explained his labor-intensive process to us: “We started by ordering thousands of cubes to figure out how this would come together. There was a lot of research on the hanging system and what kind of stainless steel rods to use. Once we did the math, we were quite surprised to realize we would be using over 800 yards of stainless steel wire. Once the materials were purchased and we figured out the math, we created a series of jigs to organize each step of the process and to make sure there would be no surprises. Once the cubes had been drilled, the rods cut to length, and the steel hanging system designed, we proceeded to hand-mix and match 1,200 individual colors that would then be applied to each cube. It was quite a stressful project, as we knew that it would work in theory, but didn’t know how well until it was completely put together.”
To see My Dealer is Not a Square in person, stop by LA’s Lawrence Cantor Fine Art Gallery on September 17 for the opening of Myers’ solo show.
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My Modern Met granted permission to use photos by Andrew Myers.