James Yigitoz

Watch someone from Toronto do wonders with Rubik's cubes

When Ryan Alexander needed a big piece of art for his new Toronto condo, he decided to get creative instead of shelling out big bucks.

That's how he got into a type of pixel art called Rubikscubism, a medium that emerged in the 1980s when Rubik's cubes started becoming popular.

Until 2015, when Ryan started making art, he tells us, he hadn't really played around with Rubik's-style cubes before. But now he reconfigures hundreds of them to create portraits.

“I tend to do faces," he says. "I think most people do with pixel art because the human mind recognizes it pretty well. It’s like you’re defaulted, you’re hardwired to recognize face shapes in everything.”

Since many assume he takes the coloured stickers off of the cubes, his partner Melissa suggested he film his process while working on new commission.

In the video, which has 13,000 views on Facebook, he takes six hours (and no bathroom breaks) to turn 320 Rubik's-style cubes into a facsimile of Farrah Fawcett.

After posting this clip, he received a couple more commissions, including one from a restaurant. He currently prices his pieces at $10 a cube.


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