Strange and Intricate Pinned Skin Collages by David Adey

By Emily Temple

Feb. 26, 2012

Multimedia artist David Adey, whose wonderfully detailed art we first noticed over at Colossal, creates incredibly intricate collages from tiny pieces of printed skin cut out from the pages of magazines, pinning each fragment individually to his canvas. In some works, like the below image of David and Victoria Beckham, he reconstructs the original photo but turns the skin into a tapestry of whimsical shapes, creating a new kind of portrait. In his less figurative works, he creates large shapes and textures from hundreds and hundreds of individual pieces — as in “22 Footer,” which looks like an enormous, coiled worm from far away, but at a closer look is revealed to be hundreds of cut out lips pinned together like scales. Click through to see some of our favorite of Adey’s collage work, and then be sure to head over to his website for even more, or check out his current solo show at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.