Nick gentry digital montage number 111

by Jamal Stone

“Don’t copy that floppy!” A now-hilarious battle cry from 1992 emblematic of technology’s breakneck pace. Today, floppy disks are obsolete doodads, uncovered only when clearing out one’s desk space.

Technology doesn’t look back.

Nick gentry digital montage number 111 youtube

Go ahead and copy one.

But no one told us not to paint on floppy disks. Enter Nick Gentry, a British artist who turns the ancient media-storage device into his paintings’ canvases.

His works collect a range of floppy disks—different colors, sizes, signs of wear from use–and arranges them into cells.

The cells serve as a backdrop for portraits that occasionally incorporate elements of the floppy disks. The tiny orb of metal will become an eye, for instance.

These works recall Chuck Close‘s use of tiny “pixels” to build photo-realistic portraits, or the modern artifacts of the objet trouvé movement.

Many of the