#446. Joey Syta's My Only Desire (2007-2009)

From Joey Syta:

My Only Desire is a one third scale sculpture adaptation of a 15th century tapestry from The Lady and the Unicorn series made completely from Lite-Brite pegs, pegboards, and glue. Using only outdated materials acquired from online auctions, collecting, organizing, and affixing the pegs to complete the work was a two year endeavor. The pegs span four decades and multiple countries of origin which yield a much wider range of colors than the eight basic shades (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, and white). The original tapestry hangs along with it's five counterparts at le Musée de Cluny in Paris which are popularly regarded as representing the five basic senses along with the sixth sense of love. Authenticity is one of my main concerns in the work's presentation and materiality. Ideally it is lit naturally as this was the same light source available when viewing the originals hundreds of years ago. I've also stayed away from engineering a perfectly proportioned solid pegboard or dying the pegs the exact necessary shades to flawlessly recreate the work. This faithfulness ultimately inspired an inimitable work with a parallelogram shape, allowing the boards to overlap and the diagonal peg alignment to stay intact, as well as a unique hyper-color infused spectrum. The work is roughly four and a half feet at it's tallest and five and a half feet at it's widest consisting of approximately 55,000 pegs affixed to 36 pegboards. Lite-Brite as a medium allows me to bridge nostalgia and the present while exploring themes that often involve synesthesia, youth, communication, and grief.

Very cool!